Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : SPIAKID (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe 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 : 2931361.81 €

The SPIAKID project will build a camera using Kinetic Inductance Detectors (KIDs) to equip an 8 m class telescope to derive ages and metallicities for stars in Ultra Faint Dwarf galaxies (UFDs) in the Local Group. UFDs are the key to understand early galaxy formation processes, including the properties of the first stars, and the role of environment and internal feedback in shaping the evolution of dwarf galaxies. A full exploitation of UFDs to understand these processes requires knowledge of their precise stellar ages and metallicities. This is difficult, in many cases impossible, to obtain with existing instruments because of the faintness of UFDs. SPIAKID will allow unprecedented efficiency in acquiring wide-band spectrophotometry, making this possible. The KID provides a low resolution spectrum (goal: λ/Δλ~15) over a wide spectral range (goal: 0.45 μm to 1.60 μm), a single exposure instead of many single-band exposures. The instrument throughput is increased as the design is simplified since filtering is unnecessary and the visible and infra-red optical paths are combined. The KIDs are read continuously with zero read-out noise so the integration is driven in real time by monitoring the signal-to-noise ratio. Finally, their response is faster (~ 30 μs) than the coherence time of atmospheric turbulence (a few ms) so diffraction-limited resolution is achieved with existing image reconstruction techniques. The reconstructed images will be sharper and deeper than can be achieved by traditional seeing-limited imagers. The SPIAKID instrument will tackle other science cases, e.g. transiting exoplanets and their atmospheres or the electromagnetic emission from gravitational wave sources, and the instrument will be offered to the community to foster other uses. Our technological developments for the KIDs will place European scientists in a position to design and build innovative instruments, in astronomy but also, for example, in fast imaging for fluorescence microscopy.

Mots-clés : ultra faint dwarf galaxies
Projet ERC : SURE (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Capital Region of Denmark — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : RH
Type d'entité : Organismes publics (hors enseignement & recherche)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1431565.0 €

The SURE project: "Super resolution Ultrasound Real time imaging of Erythrocytes" will develop and research a new super resolution ultrasound imaging method capable of resolving capillary flow in the human body. The approach tracks the motion of the individual red blood cells (erythrocytes) in a three-dimensional volume for a full visualization of anatomy, flow, and perfusion in a volume down to 13 cm at 20 volumes per second. The super resolution imaging is performed without using contrast agents and is thereby 2600 times faster than current methods. The method has an isotropic resolution of 50 micrometer in all directions, and the volumetric resolution is thereby 100-400 times better than current state-of-the-art 3-D ultrasound imaging. These highly ambitious goals are attained in a synergistic research effort combing four research groups. The scientific project includes breakthroughs in silicon row-column probes with 1 million elements, advanced synthetic aperture ultrafast coded imaging, deep learning for detecting and tracking of cells, pressure gradient estimation, and visualization and quantification of several hundreds of Gbytes volumetric data. The research finally leads to clinical trials conducted on rodents and humans for studying the changes in perfusion for diabetes and cancer. The SURE imaging approach can yield a paradigm shift in the scientific study, diagnoses, and treatment of cancer, diabetes, and vascular disease at the capillary level, as it enables the possibility of volumetric visualizing capillary perfusion in real-time at frame rates above 20 Hz without injection of contrast agents. Imaging is performed using ultrasound at normal diagnostic levels with no known adverse effects and can, thus, be used on a wide range of the population from newborns to the elderly for both diagnosis and repeated screening.

Mots-clés : ultrasound,super resolution imaging,row column arrays,deep learning,beamforming,diabetes,cancer,clinical trials
Projet ERC : SYNERGY (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : University of Leeds — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499368.0 €

The SYNERGY project will unify three key paradigms for the mathematical modelling of human behaviour, namely: i) process models in psychology and cognate disciplines that seek to explain how decisions are made; ii) econometric and behavioural models that explain which factors influence the decision process and to what extent; and iii) data-driven (machine learning) methods that focus on the outcome of the decision process. The different aims and assumptions of these paradigms have resulted in very distinct strengths and weaknesses for each discipline. Only the synergy of the three will fulfil the promise of producing models that are behaviourally consistent, applicable to real-world problems, computationally tractable, and balance a priori assumptions with data-driven insights. Integrating the three approaches into new Data-Driven Behavioural Models (DDBMs) is a novel, ambitious and highly complex undertaking, but one that is timely given the rapidly changing world, increasing use of models and big data for prediction, and growing interaction between humans and “intelligent machines” that require the latter to accurately predict human behaviour to enable safe and efficient use of AI. The proposed work will result in a paradigm shift for behavioural modelling, with impact in many application domains. SYNERGY will provide analysts with a powerful new toolkit that will allow efficient large-scale behavioural modelling on increasingly rich data while providing interpretable outputs and retaining important foundations in behavioural science. Alongside major methodological contributions, the proposed research includes large-scale empirical work, applying the new DDBMs to real-world problems with implications for national policy. This includes case studies to understand and predict travel and other behaviour in a COVID-19 environment, and to establish the benefits that more behaviourally consistent AI routines for autonomous vehicles can have for road traffic safety.

Mots-clés : choice modelling,behavioural modelling,mathematical psychology,machine learning,travel behaviour
Projet ERC : RECEPT (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
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 : 1986000.0 €

The Standard Model (SM) of Particle Physics is the most accurate available description of nature at microscopic scales, yet it is in fundamental contradiction with cosmological observations and models which describe the macroscopic universe. For this reason, it is postulated that the SM is incomplete, and that additional particles and/or forces are needed in order to describe both microscopic and macroscopic reality in a coherent and self-consistent manner. If such additional New Physics does exist, precision measurements of the ways in which SM particles transform into each other should simultaneously disagree with certain SM predictions, and agree with the given New Physics model. Within this project, I will build a team of researchers dedicated to measuring one of the SM's most precise predictions, lepton universality (LU), with unprecedented experimental precision using the LHCb detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. In the current run, the LHC will deliver proton-proton collisions to LHCb until the end of 2018, allowing my team to make the world's most precise measurements of LU in the decays of beauty hadrons. Subsequently, the LHC will shut down for two years, and during this time the LHCb detector will be upgraded to allow it to collect five times more data per calendar year. This upgrade will allow my team to make the world's most precise measurements of LU in strange decays with data taken in 2021, significantly extending LHCb's physics programme. To make these measurements possible and take full advantage of the LHCb upgrade, my team will also optimize the reconstruction of the upgraded LHCb detector, making it possible to fully reconstruct and analyze the data produced in the detector in real-time. This approach, completely novel in High Energy Physics, will not only improve the sensitivity to LU in strange decays by up to an order of magnitude, but greatly expand the general physics programme of the upgraded LHCb detector.
Projet ERC : NuBSM (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
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 : 1210452.0 €

The Standard Model of particle physics is a hugely successful theory that has been tested in experiments at ever increasing energies, culminating in the recent discovery of the Higgs boson. Nevertheless, some major riddles cannot be addressed by the Standard Model, such as neutrino oscillations, the existence of Dark Matter, the absence of antimatter in the Universe. New fundamental principles, interactions and unknown yet particles are required to address these questions. Much of the research done during the last three decades on physics ‘beyond the Standard Model’ (BSM) has been driven by attempts to find a ‘natural’ solution of the hierarchy problem: why the Planck and the electroweak scales are so different. The most popular approaches to this problem predict new particles with the masses right above the electroweak scale. This project explores an alternative idea that the absence of new particles with masses between the electroweak and Planck scales, supplemented by extra symmetries (such as scale invariance) may itself explain why the mass of the Higgs boson is much smaller than the Planck mass. This calls for a solution of the BSM problems by extremely feebly interacting particles with masses below the electroweak scale. Along the same lines we also explore the possibility that cosmological inflation does not require a new field, but is driven by the Higgs field of the Standard Model. The proposed model offers solutions for BSM puzzles and is among a few ones that can be tested with existing experimental technologies and are valid even if no evidence for new physics is found at the LHC. Constructing such a theory requires consolidated efforts in domains of high-energy theory, particle physics phenomenology, physics of the early Universe, cosmology and astrophysics as well as analyses of the available data from previous experiments and from cosmology. We will make predictions and establish the sensitivity goals for future high intensity experiments.

Mots-clés : physics of the early universe,higgs inflation,baryon asymmetry,sterile neutrino dark matter
Projet ERC : TITANIUM (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Geometry factory — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 37500.0 €

The TITANIUM proposal aims to develop a software demonstrator for geometry processing and 3D urban modeling, in order to facilitate the pre-commercialization of novel software components for the Computational Geometry Algorithms Library. The proposed demonstrator will include novel approaches resulting from the ERC-funded IRON project (‘Robust Geometry Processing’, StG-2010-257474), which are illustrated by publications presented at premier conferences in our field (receiving two best paper awards) and a patent submitted in 2015. The expected outcomes of TITANIUM will be versatile methods for 3D reconstruction and simplification of data gathered from geometric measurements, as well as related methods specifically tailored to urban modeling. These methods represent a significant step forward by offering unrivaled levels of robustness, and automated generation of levels of detail that are semantically meaningful. The acronym TITANIUM, a robust and lightweight material, conveys our wish to streamline the geometric modeling pipeline through robust algorithms and lightweight representations. This Proof of Concept project will also implement the steps required for pre-commercialization. In view of this goal, we have included an industrial partner, GeometryFactory, a spinoff from Inria launched in 2003. We have already established preliminary contacts in the fields of metrology and geographic information systems. These contacts will provide real-world industrial case studies.

Mots-clés : digital geometry processing,computational geometry algorithms library,3d reconstruction,shape approximation,urban modeling
Projet ERC : TRANSFORM (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Social World and Its Diversity
Entité participante : University of Cape Town — Pays : Afrique du Sud — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UCT
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 197866.25 €

The Trafficking Transformations Project will use an innovative, multidisciplinary, object-centred framework to investigate the physical and contextual changes that illicit criminogenic collectables undergo during the trafficking process in three transnational criminal markets: antiquities, rare wildlife, and fossils. It will explore the socio-economic effects of the trafficked objects on participants in international criminal networks. It will transform organised crime research by shifting the focus of trafficking research away from criminals and networks of criminals toward following the objects of desire. Prior approaches to trafficking research cast trafficking as an interface between organised crime (people moving the objects) and white-collar crime (affluent people receiving goods); objects were not considered social agents in these networks. Trafficking Transformations pushes the boundaries of mainstream criminology, proposing an innovative object-centred understanding of trafficking networks, and exploring the ultimate question: How do objects cause crimes? The project will use object biography, a multi-sited ethnography technique, to investigate the influences and transformations of trafficked criminogenic collectables in international illicit markets. Through data collection at multiple sites along trafficking pathways, the transformations of criminogenic collectables, the networks that they create, and the people they influence will form a narrative, a biography of trafficking. This will reveal the hidden lives of illicit commodities prior to their appearance as objects of conspicuous consumption in public markets, and holds the prospect of destabilising existing assumptions about the formulation, maintenance, and disruption of transnational criminal networks, transforming our understanding of organised crime.

Mots-clés : trafficking,transnational crime,organised crime,antiquities,wildlife,fossils,criminal networks
Projet ERC : AimingT6SS (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy
Entité participante : University of Basel — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2493650.0 €

The Type 6 secretion system (T6SS) allows Gram-negative bacteria to deliver toxins into both eukaryotic and bacterial target cells and thus cause disease or kill competitors. T6SS is composed of four main parts: a membrane complex, a baseplate and a long spring-like sheath wrapped around an inner tube. Sheath contraction generates a large amount of energy to push the tube with associated toxins through the baseplate and membrane complex out of the cell. However, the reach of the T6SS tube is limited and thus a direct contact with the target membrane and precise positioning of T6SS assembly is required for protein translocation. In this proposal, we will unravel principles of spatial and temporal coordination of T6SS assembly that we have recently observed in several bacterial species. We will study how cells sense attacks from neighboring bacteria to dynamically localize its T6SS. We will describe how bacteria initiate and position T6SS assembly in response to physical cell-cell interactions. We will identify the principles and the role of T6SS localization in intracellular pathogens. Using genetic and biochemical approaches, we will identify and characterize proteins interacting with the core components of T6SS and test their role in initiation and positioning of T6SS assembly. We will search for peptidoglycan remodeling enzymes required for T6SS assembly. We will use advanced microscopy techniques to describe dynamic localization of proteins upon T6SS activation to establish the order of their assembly. We will quantify how much T6SS aiming increases efficiency of protein delivery and T6SS function during bacterial competition and pathogenesis. Overall, we will unravel novel principles of spatial and temporal control of localization of protein complexes and show how this allows bacteria to quickly respond to external cues and interact with their environment.

Mots-clés : secretion systems,dynamics,sensing,protein localization,advanced microscopy,complex assembly
Projet ERC : ULTRATUNE (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Aston University — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 149445.0 €

The ULTRATUNE project aims to develop and demonstrate a feasibility of a conceptually new photonic product - random fibre laser that is tunable over record ultra-broad wavelength range. The outstanding tunability characteristics defined by the unique underlying physics of random fibre lasers and the simplicity of the scheme make the proposed device a very attractive light source both for fundamental science and practical applications. Spectral tunability is one of the important features of laser source, highly desirable in a vast range of applications: numerous scientific applications, astronomy, spectroscopy, measurement applications, laser isotope separation, medical applications, material processing and diagnostics, remote sensing, and telecommunications. Tunable lasers, are an enabling technology that is critically important for optical communication bandwidth expansion into the low loss bands of optical fibre. Tunable lasers allow telecom operators to substantially reduce inventories (number of back-up lasers to replace failed sources) in wave-division-multiplexing systems. An even more important role will be played by tunable laser sources in the next generation of future reconfigurable flexible network architectures that include requirements on switchable wavelengths, burst and label switching, bandwidth on demand, and other functions related to spectral tunability. The novelty and advantage of the proposed solution in comparison to the existing devices is a combination of high power (several Watts) and ultra-broad tunability (several hundreds of nanometers, but with limits yet to be explored). The project will combine proof-of-principle research and exploration of all relevant economic aspects of commercialisation of the proposed innovative device.

Mots-clés : tuneable laser,telecommunications,random fibre laser
Projet ERC : WAVESCOPE (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and communication engineering
Entité participante : Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UCSC;UNICATT
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 30000.0 €

The WAVESCOPE project is about exploiting a novel optical concept recently introduced by the PI in the domain of medical imaging. This concept deals with the frontier research topic in the photonics, i.e. the self-control of the spatial quality of optical beams in multimode nonlinear optical fibers. The WAVESCOPE technology is poised to enable a breakthrough in the clinical domain, providing for the first time ever the stable delivery of high power and strongly focused optical beams with multimode optical fibers into the demanding domain of intraoperative imaging. In the state-of-the-art multimode nonlinear optical devices, propagation in multimode fibers is hampered by randomization of light beams, leading to beam scrambling after short lengths of fiber. This makes the use of multimode fibers unviable for real-time imaging, because of the necessary lengthy pre- and post-processing of the optical signal. Our approach is to exploit the intensity dependent refractive index of fibers to recover the spatial beam quality of a multimode wave. In the project we shall develop a new multimode fiber based device for scanning 3D samples with micrometer resolution by using ultrashort high peak power optical pulses, whereby fiber nonlinearity provides an environmentally robust compensation of temporal and spatial dispersion, thus preventing information spreading in time domain, and beam quality loss in the spatial domain. WAVESCOPE technology has applications in many industry fields: here we will demonstrate the proof-of-principle generation of high-resolution optical images in optical microscopy/endoscopy, thereby resolving an uncovered need on the introduction of the intraoperative pathologic assessment in oncology through the in-situ optical biopsy.

Mots-clés : optical fibers,kerr effect,nonlinear optics,optical solitons,multiphoton imaging,nonlinear microscopy,intraoperative pathology assessment,marker free microscopy,real time surgical margin assessment