Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : Water-Cultures (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : University of Leicester — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 11028.75 €

Behind this project lies a paradox: water, although vital for life, has historically had little intrinsic value. Considered base and common as a drink, it was nevertheless the most symbolically charged of the elements; of limited monetary value in and of itself, access to it was in fact hard-fought, the foundation and driving force of society. The Water Cultures project aims to create a new field of study, based around the social and cultural history of a people’s polyvalent interactions with water, applicable to a wide range of places and times. The project proposes an epistemological method of structuring, analysing and presenting the diverse range of findings and approaches into a new holistic understanding. The Water Cultures concept is based on the synergistic braiding of five key 'Streams': the symbolic beliefs and practices associated with water; the circulation and evolution of knowledge about water and disease and its effects; the water management systems of large cities and demands on them; the changing hydraulic landscape of rural areas; and the occupations of water, exploring the professions and trades associated with water and its delivery and uses. Italy has been chosen as the case study—for its rich archives and social, political and geographical variety. The Italian history of water, from the 1500s to the end of the 19th century, is a story of authority and conflict, social hierarchy and material realities, changing medical and scientific knowledge and technological expertise, and religious beliefs and practices. Yet Italian historians have undervalued water and its uses. This transformative project conceptualises a new way of writing history, with water at its core. It proposes the history and culture of a given society, the construction of identities and forms of self-representation based on relationships and interactions with water: the ways of controlling, using and conceiving it, and the symbolic, creative and material dimensions it assumed.

Mots-clés : water and the sacred,thermal springs,mineral waters,water and health,disease,cholera,sanitation,hydraulic systems and infrastructure,water supply management,water access,irrigation and land reclamation,water related occupations,circulation of hydrological knowledge and expertise,social and cultural history,environmental history,architectural history,history of medicine,science and technology,hydraulic archaeology,landscape archaeology,social and cultural his
Projet ERC : LETHE (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Social World and Its Diversity
Entité participante : Austrian Academy of Sciences — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : OAW
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1713352.5 €

Better health is central to human happiness and wellbeing. It also contributes substantially to economic progress, as healthy populations live longer and are more productive. Accordingly, the EU defined the improvement of health as a fundamental element of its “Europe 2020” strategy. The corresponding public health policies are assessed on the basis of a structural indicator for “Health Expectancy” (HE). Unfortunately, HE estimates are extremely sensitive to certain methodological issues of which many are widely ignored. First, the common measurement of population health by the responses to specific survey questions is ambiguous. As a consequence, statistics on levels and trends of HE vary significantly depending on the underlying survey data and health indicators. Almost completely unrecognized is a second problem: HE estimates are also highly sensitive to particular technical features, e.g. the age range and partitioning selected for analysis and the technique chosen to add the health dimension to the life table. The efforts that have been hitherto undertaken to improve the estimation of HE focus primarily on the measurement of health with surveys, whereas the effects of the chosen HE indicator, data and method remain largely unexplored. The central aim of LETHE is to fill these gaps through a systematic exploration of the HE indicator’s sensitivity to these issues. To emphasize the empirical significance of the proposed research, the effects will be investigated in the context of some major actual research questions, in particular the “compression versus expansion of morbidity” debate and the differences in HE between European populations and subpopulations. Finally, the project aims to identify the particular health measure that is most strongly associated with people’s actual happiness. These innovative approaches feature the potential to provide not only new insights into the levels and trends of HE, but also about its main drivers and causation mechanisms.
Projet ERC : IMA-cRCT (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Autres
Financement ERC de l'entité : 381250.0 €

Between 3 and 42% of patients do not initiate their treatments. Non-initiation and non-adherence are associated with poorer clinical outcomes, more days of sick leave and higher costs. The aim of this research project is to generate an effective, efficient and feasible intervention that improve initiation and adherence and improves clinical symptoms. The long-term benefits in terms of improved health and reduced costs will be evaluated. The results will be disseminated to stakeholders, decision-makers and the scientific community to promote implementation. The intervention is expected to improve the clinical practice, empowering the patient. The project develops an innovative approach to the design and evaluation of behavioural interventions that uses the principles of complex interventions, pragmatic trials and implementation research. Nine interventions to reduce non-initiation have been tested. The interventions were not theory-based and most used simple reminders. The evidence supporting these interventions was low and their impact on clinical symptoms and cost-effectiveness was not assessed. The strengths of the IMA-cRCT study are: 1) the main stakeholders are involved in the design and assessment; 2) IMA intervention is theory-based and has been optimized; 3) the study will assess the impact of the intervention on clinical parameters and cost-effectiveness, which is key to guarantee its transferability; 4) the project involves decision-makers; 5) the pragmatic design increases generalisation and 6) the intervention is easily transferable to other pathologies, populations and countries. As part of the ERC research project, a pragmatic cluster randomized controlled trial (cRCT) will evaluate the short-term effects of the IMA intervention and its cost-effectiveness and Markov models will be constructed to estimate its long-term cost-effectiveness. The results will be disseminated to facilitate its transferability to clinical practice in Spain and Europe.

Mots-clés : non initiation,adherence,pragmatic trials,complex interventions,cost effectiveness,economic modelling,primary care,cardiovascular disease
Projet ERC : PETRIFYING WEALTH (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : Spanish National Research Council — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CSIC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1904821.99 €

Between the years 1050 and 1300 the European landscape turned to stone. It was a structural transformation that led to the birth of a new, long-lasting panorama and helped in the creation of individual, collective and regional identities: a landscape epitomising the way we see the space and territory of Europe. Petrifying Wealth seeks to rewrite the social history of the central Middle Ages, emphasizing the need to reassess from an untried perspective an element that has always been present in our vision of the period—the sudden ubiquity of masonry construction—but which has hardly been given the opportunity to provide in-depth explanations for complex social dynamics. This project seeks to offer novel explanations to previously unasked questions about wealth, building, and collective identity. The speed, extent, and systematization of the construction of churches, towers, castle walls, palaces, and houses within castles and cities provide evidence of an underlying, if unaddressed, issue. That is, it is precisely in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that the structural link can most clearly be seen between both private and collective wealth, and the investment in stone structures built to last. Our study of the shift involving new institutional dynamics, but also unprecedented social practices, as well as ideological concepts radically different from those that had prevailed until then, aims to break down assumptions that have naturalized this truly astonishing process while using as case studies the undervalued regions of southern Europe to explore the larger questions. By inverting the standard approach that sees the heart of the former Carolingian empire (present-day France and Germany) as the wellspring from which other “peripheral” territories drank, we bring new light to probe the greater meaning behind the process of masonry building as an investment in social identity in the central Middle Ages.

Mots-clés : central middle ages,social history,masonry building,southern europe,wealth,social identity
Projet ERC : NetMoDEzyme (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : University of Girona — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UdG
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1445587.5 €

Billions of years of evolution have made enzymes superb catalysts capable of accelerating reactions by several orders of magnitude. The underlying physical principles of their extraordinary catalytic power still remains highly debated, which makes the alteration of natural enzyme activities towards synthetically useful targets a tremendous challenge for modern chemical biology. The routine design of enzymes will, however, have large socio-economic benefits, as because of the enzymatic advantages the production costs of many drugs will be reduced and will allow industries to use environmentally friendly alternatives. The goal of this project is to make the routine design of proficient enzymes possible. Current computational and experimental approaches are able to confer natural enzymes new functionalities but are economically unviable and the catalytic efficiencies lag far behind their natural counterparts. The groundbreaking nature of NetMoDEzyme relies on the application of network models to reduce the complexity of the enzyme design paradigm and completely reformulate previous computational design approaches. The new protocol proposed accurately characterizes the enzyme conformational dynamics and customizes the included mutations by exploiting the correlated movement of the enzyme active site residues with distal regions. The guidelines for mutation are withdrawn from the costly directed evolution experimental technique, and the most proficient enzymes are easily identified via chemoinformatic models. The new strategy will be applied to develop proficient enzymes for the synthesis of enantiomerically pure β-blocker drugs for treating cardiovascular problems at a reduced cost. The experimental assays of our computational predictions will finally elucidate the potential of this genuinely new approach for mimicking Nature’s rules of evolution.

Mots-clés : network models,markov state models,biocatalysis,computational enzyme design,molecular dynamics simulations,quantum mechanics,theozyme,inside out protocol,directed evolution
Projet ERC : BioAlkane (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering
Entité participante : Delft University of Technology — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TU Delft
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

BioAlkane will provide the proof-of-concept for the economic and ecological feasibility of a new concept for the valorisation of waste fatty acids as alkanes useful for the energy and transportation sector. Using a new catalyst class (photodecarboxylases) we will establish a completely new method for the conversion of fatty acids into alkanes (instead of the traditionally used fatty acid methyl esters). Using a novel photoreactor design, we will overcome current limitations of photobiocatalysis (i.e. low quantum efficiency due to poor light penetration into the reactor) and demonstrate the scaleability and economic viability of our next generation of biodiesel.

Mots-clés : biodiesel,biocatalysis,photochemistry,renewable feedstock
Projet ERC : APPLICAL (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cellular, Developmental and Regenerative Biology
Entité participante : University of Cambridge — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : U. Cambridge
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 98250.0 €

BioBiorefineries are facing a positive economic outlook due to the ever-growing concerns for climate change, which is triggering demand towards carbon neutral materials and energy derived from renewable sources. However, the growth of the industry is hampered by their low profit margins and additional investments and innovations are needed to improve process efficiency. The key problem in migrating towards green production is the biomass recalcitrance, which is known to be a major bottleneck in the lignocellulosic biomass conversion process. The initial steps common to several biorefinery process pipelines, the extraction and sugar conversion process (saccharification), can account to as much as 40-45% of the process costs. Therefore, biorefineries can achieve extensive economic impact by addressing this part of their process through a simple business development effort. We recently made a breakthrough and obtained a biomass less recalcitrant to bioconversion into fermentable sugars. Results show that introduction of only 5% Callose in genetically modified poplars led to 90% more fermentable sugars released during saccharification experiments without any growth penalty, a frequent drawback for such innovations. In practice, this proposes added value to biorefineries through decreased raw material intake, improved throughput and improved yield. For instance, bioethanol production could expect a linear throughput increase (in the 50-90% range) with the same material intake. Moreover, the more manageable pretreatment process will also experience improved energy efficiency. In the PoC we will carry out technical proof-of-concept and commercialisation planning activities to improve the maturity, and bringing our patented innovation closer to the markets with applications ranging from biofuels, advanced materials and bioplastics to specialty chemicals. Our initial goal is to start industrial scale trials in 5 years time and achieve substantial market penetration by 2035.

Mots-clés : callose,cellulose,cell wall,poplar,biomass,biorefinery,throughput,yield,efficiencyiluc impact,bioproducts,biomaterials,bioeconomy,sustainability,commercialisation
Projet ERC : LIFEPLAN (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Duke University — Pays : Etats-Unis — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2833620.0 €

Biodiversity underlies ecosystem functioning. To achieve the basis for a sustainable management of natural resources under current environmental change, we thus need a unified theory of the forces structuring vast sets of ecosystems and taxonomical groups on Earth. For the first time, such a synthesis is now within reach, based on a recent revolution in sampling methodology, globally relevant ecological data, and advances in statistical methods for linking immense data to community ecological theory. In LIFEPLAN, we bring together the key expertise needed to generate and interpret Big Ecological Data for a global synthesis of biotic patterning across our planet: world leaders in community ecology, methods for automated species recognition, and Bayesian statistics for immense data. Our objectives are to generate a new understanding of biodiversity patterns and dynamics by developing fundamentally new methods for big data statistics. To this end, we will generate fully standardized, global big data on a range of species groups, thus allowing quantification of variation in ecological communities at spatial scales covering six orders of magnitude (from 0.1 km to 10000 km), across tens of thousands of species. The resulting data motivate the development of transformative big data statistics, in particular highly scalable algorithms for spatio-temporal data, as well as methods for automated species identification from DNA, audio and image samples. As a key deliverable, we will develop global joint species distribution models describing the spatio-temporal structure of life on Earth. Working together will allow each of us to tackle what we regard as the ultimate challenges in our own fields, while simultaneously collaborating around solutions changing the face of modern biodiversity science. Now is the time for this project, as the big data and big methods emerging today coincide with a great need for global understanding of biodiversity structure and dynamics.

Mots-clés : global patterning of life,big data science,automated species recognition,high throughput data generation,community ecology,biodiversity science,bayesian statistics,scalable methods,hierarchical patterns and processes,joint species distribution modelling
Projet ERC : TUVOLU (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : University of Copenhagen — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCPH
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2347668.0 €

Biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) influence atmospheric oxidation causing climate feedback thought to be especially significant in remote areas with low anthropogenic emissions, such as the Arctic. Still, we do not understand the dynamics and impact of climatic and biotic BVOC emission drivers in arctic and alpine tundra, which are highly temperature-sensitive BVOC sources. TUVOLU will redefine tundra BVOC emission estimates to account for rapid and dramatic climate warming accompanied by effects of vegetation change, permafrost thaw, insect outbreaks and herbivory using multidisciplinary, established and novel methodology. We will quantify the relationships between leaf and canopy temperatures and BVOC emissions to improve BVOC emission model predictions of emission rates in low-statured tundra vegetation, which efficiently heats up. We will experimentally determine the contribution of induced BVOC emissions from insect herbivory in the warming Arctic by field manipulation experiments addressing basal herbivory and insect outbreaks and by stable isotope labelling to identify sources of the induced emission. Complementary laboratory assessment will determine if permafrost thaw leads to significant BVOC emissions from thawing processes and newly available soil processes, or if released BVOCs are largely taken up by soil microbes. We will also use a global network of existing climate warming experiments in alpine tundra to assess how the BVOC emissions from tundra vegetation world-wide respond to climate change. Measurement data will help develop and parameterize BVOC emission models to produce holistic enhanced predictions for global tundra emissions. Finally, modelling will be used to estimate emission impact on tropospheric ozone concentrations and secondary organic aerosol levels, producing the first assessment of arctic BVOC-mediated feedback on regional air quality and climate.

Mots-clés : arctic tundra,alpine tundra,ecosystem modelling,global predictions,biogenic volatile organic compounds,insect herbivory,permafrost thaw,temperature,climate change
Projet ERC : TransFold (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions
Entité participante : Heidelberg University — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2069000.0 €

Biological activity of cells depends on timely production of natively folded proteins by powerful translation and folding machineries. At a critical regulatory intersection of translation and folding, ribosomes act as integration hubs coordinating chaperone, enzyme and membrane targeting factor activity, and mRNA coding sequence specifies local changes in translation speed, influencing folding. Final assembly of proteins into oligomeric complexes however, has long been considered posttranslational and dependent on random collision of fully synthesized diffusing subunits. In a shift of paradigm our recent evidence now suggests that in bacteria, assembly initiates co-translationally assisted by chaperones, and gene organization into operons drives co-localized translation of complex subunits that impacts efficiency of assembly. Fundamental differences in eukaryotes such as rarity of operons and differing chaperone constellations imply a widely different folding and assembly biology, which remains largely unexplored. Our development of the selective ribosome profiling (SeRP) method now allows ground-breaking identification and definition of dynamic interactions of nascent chains, at near-residue resolution. Using SeRP with supporting biochemistry and microscopy, we will unravel the nascent chain molecular biology underpinning protein folding and assembly in yeast. Specifically, we will establish (1) basic features and prevalence of co-translational protein assembly, (2) how chaperones guide co-translational protein folding to affect assembly, (3) whether translation of subunit-encoding mRNAs is spatially organized, and if so, how this occurs, and (4) to what extent translation speed variations affect assembly. Subunit interaction profiles complemented by mRNA localization will expose the timing and interplay of protein folding and assembly steps linked to protein synthesis, establishing a detailed conceptually new biology of complex assembly in eukaryotes.

Mots-clés : molecular chaperones,co translational protein folding,protein folding and assembly