Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : RegEvol (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499911.0 €

Gene regulation plays an essential role in shaping species differences and modulating phenotypes across development and environmental conditions. It essentially works through the recruitment of trans-acting intermediates to cis-acting DNA sequences affecting the expression of the nearby gene. While gene expression regulation is central in molecular, cellular, developmental, and system biology, its detailed mechanisms have relatively little been incorporated into modern evolutionary theory. I previously discovered two processes specific to gene expression evolution in diploids, cis-regulator runaway and divergence. They arise because of (i) transient dominance modifications that automatically occur following the evolution of cis-acting regulatory elements and (ii) coevolution of these cis-acting elements with trans-acting regulators. I have shown that accounting for these processes calls into question a half-century of theory on sex chromosome evolution and may rejuvenate empirical and theoretical work in this field. Here, I will develop the evolutionary theory of cis- and trans-regulators at full scale and empirically test its core features and predictions. Specifically, there are sound reasons to believe that this new theory also has the potential to strongly advance our understanding of other fundamental and enigmatic features of eukaryotic life. It may be a crucial missing element to explain the origin of eukaryotic regulatory complexity and how and why sex – asex transitions fail or succeed and, therefore, why eukaryotic sex is maintained. RegEvol offers a new and original approach to important problems in evolutionary biology. If successful, it will significantly advance our understanding of eukaryotic life-forms and provide a general framework for gene expression evolution in eukaryotes.

Mots-clés : sex chromosomes asexuality gene regulation diploid expression theory genomics
Projet ERC : BlaHSt (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2487450.0 €

The discovery of black holes, first as explicit solutions of Einstein equations of general relativity, and later as possible explanations of astrophysical phenomena, has revolutionized our understanding of the universe. From a mathematical perspective, a central issue is to investigate the stability of these fascinating objects. This is the focus of the present proposal containing the following work packages:  -Kerr stability conjecture. This concerns the nonlinear stability of Kerr black holes which form a 2-parameter family of explicit solutions to Einstein vacuum equations. It has become, since its discovery by R. Kerr in 1963, a central topic in general relativity, first during the golden age of black hole physics, and in the last twenty years in mathematical relativity. These efforts have led to the recent resolution, by the PI and collaborators, of the conjecture in the slowly rotating case. The goal of this work package is to tackle the general case.  -Black hole stability with matter. Breakthrough concerning the stability of Kerr for Einstein vacuum equations opens the door to other physically relevant cases in the context of Einstein equations coupled to matter. This work package aims at proving the stability of charged Kerr-Newman black holes for Einstein-Maxwell equations, Kerr back holes for massless Einstein-Vlasov equation, as well as the stability of Kerr-de Sitter black holes in the case of an arbitrarily small cosmological constant.  -Price's law and Kerr stability. An open problem concerns the optimal decay rate for perturbations of Kerr that can be achieved in the Kerr stability problem. The analogous problem for corresponding linear toy models is known as Price's law. Obtaining an optimal decay rate in the context of the Kerr stability problem would not only vastly extend Price's law, but it is also expected to have important implications on the Strong Cosmic Censorship conjecture concerning the deterministic character of Einstein equations.

Mots-clés : einstein equations,general relativity,black holes,asymptotic stability,hyperbolic partial differential equations,lorentzian manifolds,decay for wave equations
Projet ERC : AETHER (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499534.0 €

Photochemistry entails natural and artificial reactions that are activated optically, and is at the heart of fundamental processes such as photosynthesis, vision, polymerization, catalysis, or energy conversion… Innovative approaches to gain control over photochemical reactions that relied on macro- and mesoscale manipulations of light (e.g., chemistry in an optical cavity, plasmon-enhanced reactions, etc.) were reported recently, but no strategy was proposed to address the photochemistry of a molecule with atomic-scale precision. AETHER aims to provide a disruptive photochemical method whose fundamental concept is based on the manipulation of light with ultimate spatial accuracy. This approach relies on the confinement of a laser excitation – pulsed or continuous – into an extremely small volume at the apex of a scanning probe tip, eventually acting as a plasmonic picocavity. This confined electromagnetic field can then be moved on top of organic structures where it locally generates photo reactions. AETHER aims at addressing questions in a wide range of fields related to physical chemistry:  - Can one generate photochemical reactions in a sub-unit of a molecule while preserving the rest of it? Can one use this site-specific approach to synthesize new molecular species?  - To what extent can we deepen our understanding of fundamental natural processes (e.g., energy transfer, photo-isomerization) at play, for example, in photosynthesis and vision?  - Can we combine this atomic-scale optical approach with time-resolved techniques to follow photochemical reactions in real time and real space?  Answering these questions requires probing, manipulating, and exciting molecules with atomic and sub-picosecond precisions. To this end, a scanning probe microscope associated with laser excitation sources will be developed to provide simultaneous spatial, spectral, and temporal control over different types of photochemical reactions.

Mots-clés : scanning probe microscopy
Projet ERC : MAMBA (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Académie autrichienne des sciences — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : ÖAW
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 215845.0 €

The discovery of large accumulations of woolly mammoth remains together with Upper Palaeolithic artefacts has fascinated both researchers and the general public since the 19th century. Despite many years of scientific research and dispute our knowledge about these sites and the relationship between mammoths and contemporaneous Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers remains incomplete. This project focuses on the mammoth bone accumulations found in the West Carpathian forelands and seeks to establish why they formed and their function for hunter-gatherer groups 35,000-25,000 years ago – a period of major techno-cultural and environmental change in approaching the Last Glacial Maximum. For the first time we will study materials covering the full chronological range of this archaeological phenomenon, considering both existing collections alongside new fieldwork at the key sites of Dolní Věstonice I, Kraków Spadzista and Langmannersdorf. Site-specific signals of human-mammoth interaction within their local palaeoenvironmental context will be used to investigate chrono-spatial changes in both mammoth populations and hunter-gatherer societies. We will employ standardised field and laboratory protocols that utilise recent methodological and technological advances in ancient DNA research, stable isotope studies, radiometric dating, palaeoenvironmental reconstruction and palaeodemographic modelling. The resulting dataset will allow an integrated investigation of the formation of mammoth bone accumulations and produce a statistically analysable dataset expected to reveal the interactions between human and mammoth populations in Central Europe in the context of palaeoenvironmental changes. This will have great impact not only for Upper Palaeolithic research in Central Europe, but will on a general scale also contribute to an improved understanding of human behaviour, cultural developments, and human adaptation to dynamically changing climatic and environmental conditions.

Mots-clés : upper palaeolithic,pleistocene
Projet ERC : STATE-DNA (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Université de Potsdam — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999723.0 €

Why do government structures change? Traditionally, the answer refers to political parties exercising control over a state bureaucracy. Yet government structures have been changing ever since they emerged alongside the modern state and thus already before parties existed. The recent decline of party government worldwide also begs the question whether other actors and mechanisms matter that have been underestimated so far. Meanwhile, it became a truism that “structure shapes policy”, but existing research focuses on other effects of structural change in government, such as democratic and economic outcomes or cabinet governance. We lack systematic analyses of how structural change affects government policy.  To address these gaps, STATE-DNA studies the change of units inside ministries and agencies as the ‘building blocks’ of the modern state. It submits a novel theory of evolutionary government that regards structural change in government as an interplay between a unit’s structural features and its organizational and environmental environment. This notion of multiple levels allows to study more than ‘party-centric’ causes of change and, for the first time, to analyze the effects on government policy explicitly, as evolutionary consequences managed by distinct units.  STATE-DNA breaks new ground by applying genetic measures to assess structural change in government, establishing the most comprehensive data set, which begins with the ‘primordial soup’ of the early 19th century when government structures fragmented (~150,000 units, six countries, 1815–2025). For the empirical analyses, existing (historical) data on legislative activity, organizational, and environmental features will be used and extended. STATE-DNA will exploit methodological advancements in biology, such as data assimilation techniques, to analyze the origins and consequences of structural change in government and to forecast such change, thereby injecting a predictive notion into government studies.
Projet ERC : EDUCHANGE (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Université de Potsdam — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 119059.0 €

EDUCHANGE aims to become one of the first ever projects to conduct simultaneous field experiments in four strategically selected countries (Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Iceland) with the goal to reduce inequality at the educational transition from compulsory to secondary education and at the transition to higher education. While experimental intervention studies have become more common in sociology and economics in recent years, EDUCHANGE will address five critical limitations in this literature: 1) No information or career guidance experiment with the goal to reduce inequality at educational transitions has ever been implemented in different countries with a harmonized design. This is puzzling given the importance of institutional context for the generation of inequalities in education 2) The majority of experiments focus on the transition to higher education while neglecting earlier transitions which are particularly relevant in tracked European education systems 3) Previous experiments have hardly considered the role and knowledge of professional counsellors 4) Previous interventions have mainly focused on updating students’ biased perceptions of costs and returns while neglecting other psychological and social barriers 5) Advances in multimedia technologies have only to a limited extent been integrated in previous experiments.  Key outcomes of EDUCHANGE will include: (a) A more nuanced conceptual understanding of how career guidance and information provision can help to reduce inequalities (b) A comparative study of students’ subjective evaluation of costs, returns and probabilities of success and psychological barriers they attach to different educational alternatives in a comparative perspective (c) Knowledge about to what degree institutional context has an impact on whether information provision and career guidance can reduce inequality at two key educational transitions – and potentially affect persistence at the next level.

Mots-clés : social inequality in education,field experiments,educational transitions,comparative research
Projet ERC : LEAP (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Materials Engineering
Entité participante : Université de Linköping — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1834375.0 €

Electrically pumped lasers are considered as a holy grail in the field of optoelectronics. Despite the success of lasers based on expensive epitaxially grown semiconductors, low-cost solution-processed semiconductors provide new opportunities to significantly expand the applications of lasers. On one hand, low-cost and scalable deposition can meet increasing demand of using lasers in consumer electronics. On the other hand, solution-processed semiconductors can be easily proceeded into thin films, providing great promise to develop thin-film lasers which are required for highly integrated photonics chips in advanced applications. A superstar in the family of solution-processed semiconductors is metal halide perovskites, which have shown great success in a range of optoelectronic applications. Especially, recent breakthroughs on optically pumped perovskite lasers and high-performance perovskite light-emitting diodes indicate great potential of developing perovskites into a new generation of materials for electrically pumped lasers.  This project has the ambitious goal to realise solution-processed electrically pumped perovskite lasers. I will take a holistic approach, where novel concepts are proposed to address critical challenges on the development of perovskite lasers. Both type-I and type-II perovskite quantum well heterostructures, which utilise fundamentally different mechanisms to reach low thresholds, will be developed as the gain media. Edge-emitting devices based on these new perovskite gain media will then be coupled into rationally designed cavities for lasing actions. At the core of the research is the synthesis of new perovskite materials, combined with advanced spectroscopic characterizations and device/cavity development. This project makes use of recent advances in perovskite optoelectronics to create a new paradigm for electrically pumped perovskite lasers, and will open up new possibilities to revolutionize the current laser technology.

Mots-clés : metal halide perovskites perovskite quantum wells laser diodes device engineering optoelectronics
Projet ERC : INCREC (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Université de Groningue — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : RUG
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1993643.0 €

The new machine translation paradigm, neural machine translation, has drastically changed society’s perception of technology and the act of translation. It has also motivated a series of claims by research labs and the media implying that machines will soon decode the transfer of one language to another, thus driving professional translators out of their jobs. Creative content producers, such as streaming platforms or publishing houses, are now exploring, testing or using neural machine translation. Yet little is known of the constraints this technology poses to translators’ creative process and how such constraints impact the users. The need to understand this has become essential to sustain translation richness, translators’ job satisfaction, authors’ and directors’ reputations, and the user experience.  INCREC aims to uncover the creative stages of professional translators to understand how technology can be best applied to the translation of literary and audiovisual texts, and to analyse the impact of these processes on readers and viewers. The research project is articulated in four work packages that cover two broad areas: inception and reception of literary and audiovisual translation. To better understand this complex process, INCREC triangulates data from eye-tracking, retrospective think-aloud interviews, translated material, and questionnaires from professional translators and users.  Thus, INCREC develops a new theoretical framework that encompasses a) creative stages in translation, b) classification and mapping of translation problems which require a higher level of creativity and cognition, as well as a classification of the solutions to these problems c) understanding how machine translation is most effectively used during this creative process, and d) understanding user attention to creativity in translated literary texts and films. This is achieved using a new combination of methods from different disciplines.

Mots-clés : translation studies,creativity in translation,translation reception,translation processes,translation technology,machine translation,user experience,literary translation,audiovisual translation
Projet ERC : EARLYMW (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe Sciences
Entité participante : Université de Groningue — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : RUG
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999698.0 €

The Gaia mission is providing many details on the dynamical complexity of our Galaxy, now and in the past. However, the picture of the Milky Way history becomes very incomplete at early times. The scarcity of well-studied early generations stars throughout different environments, represented by the lowest metallicity stars, limits us severely to study the era of First Stars and early Galaxy assembly. Next generation massively multiplexed instruments will soon complement Gaia astrometry to its faint limit with crucial radial velocities and chemical abundance patterns. Specifically, the Northern WEAVE and Southern 4MOST surveys will finally provide the high-priority targeting of the most metal-poor stars in low- and high-resolution needed.  The aim of this EARLYMW ERC is to use these surveys to move the known history of our Galaxy back much farther to the first billion years after the Big Bang. I am in a unique position to make this step up from analysis of scarce individual stars to population studies, as I am leading the relevant very metal-poor target selection and survey efforts. To achieve the aim, my team and I will, after careful correction for selection effects (i) compare the chemical enrichment of early generations across Galactic components, and (ii) follow up very metal-poor tails of dynamical substructures and assess their dependence on progenitor properties. We will then compare our findings with cosmological simulations varying assumptions on early chemical enrichment.  This EARLYMW project will, for the first time, provide a complete census of very metal-poor stars across various Milky Way components and quantitatively assess early enrichment processes as function of environment. Our results will constrain physical parameters for early Universe enrichment and map contributions of early supernovae explosions at much smaller scales than possible at high redshift. EARLYMW will deliver a quantitative picture of the proto-galaxy that became our Milky Way.

Mots-clés : first stars chemical enrichment chemical abundances galactic archaeology
Projet ERC : ULTRATWISTROICS (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Materials Engineering
Entité participante : Université Aalto — Pays : Finlande — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999484.0 €

The groundbreaking objective of this proposal is to engineer a quantum material with super-moiré heterostructures, realizing an electronic state never observed in nature and required to build a universal topological quantum computer. Building universal topological computers, whose building blocks rely on a controllable fractional topological state, is beyond any current capability. Engineering the required quantum materials requires complete control over the electronic state and interactions, a task currently impossible with any current compound. Twisted van der Waals materials have become a highly tunable materials platform to explore exotic electronic phenomena. Here, using van der Waals heterostructures, I will design the required material to build a universal topological computer: a material featuring non-abelian Fibonacci anyons. I will achieve this by exploiting two novel strategies: the design of super-moiré hosting coexisting orders and their control via the proximity effect of multiferroic encapsulation. To tackle this challenge, I will combine well-tested and novel methodologies. In particular, I will develop three novel methodologies with wide impact: an ultra-long range formalism to tackle moiré-of-a-moiré, entanglement extraction from local dynamical impurity tomography, and neural-network solvers for fractional matter. The path to achieving these goals will allow me to create and control fractional Chern states, extract electronic entanglement with scanning tunnel microscopy, and establish a novel physically constrained many-body solver, each a milestone of exceptional interest in quantum materials engineering. I will reveal potential routes to realize and identify physics never found in nature, alongside providing methodologies of wide impact. This proposal will lead to a breakthrough in quantum materials engineering, ultimately providing the building blocks required for a van der Waals-based universal topological quantum computer.

Mots-clés : van der waals heterostructures,quantum materials,scanning tunneling microscopy