Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : PeatlandN2O (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : Université de Tartu — Pays : Estonie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3498875.0 €

Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a powerful greenhouse gas and dangerous stratospheric O3 depleting agent. Agriculture and forestry in peatlands are the main sources of N2O emissions. Climate extreme events may boost the emissions but knowledge on their effect is scarce. N2O is a product of a variety of soil processes, including denitrification, nitrification and less studied mechanisms. Partitioning of N2O fluxes between all these different mechanisms is still a major challenge. Microbial processes are of particular importance for N2O budgets. The role of canopy and tree stems in N2O budgets is currently unknown. Novel flux measurement techniques implemented at different levels in combination with remote sensing methods can provide a solid basis for adequate estimation of long-term N2O fluxes in peatlands from local to the global scale. The ground-breaking nature of the proposal lies in integrated use of a combination of innovative methods yielding a pioneering synthesis and modelling of nitrous oxide fluxes at various spatial scales, linked to microbial processes. PeatlandN2O project will: (1) determine the role of rapidly changing environmental factors (soil moisture, freeze–thaw, canopy effects) on N2O emission, particularly in hot spots and hot moments; (2) distinguish between and quantify key N2O production and consumption processes using labelled nitrogen, isotopologues, and microbiome structure; (3) integrate results of experiments and novel measurement techniques (automated chambers, stationary and mobile eddy covariance towers, canopy profile analysis) into the PEATN2O model of N2O fluxes and related environmental factors to enable prediction of hot spots and hot moments of N2O emissions; (4) upgrade IPCC emission factors and suitable land-use strategies to mitigate N2O emissions in peatlands, also considering other greenhouse gases; (5) predict global distribution of N2O emissions according to the land-use and 5 climate change scenarios for 100-year time horizon.

Mots-clés : climate warming,greenhouse gases,environmental microbiology,micrometeorology,nitrogen cycle,tropical peatlands
Projet ERC : Investibility (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : École d'économie de Stockholm — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : SSE
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2489025.0 €

There are ever fewer listed firms in the U.S. and Europe, and listed firms produce an ever shrinking share of innovation. Over the past 25 years, the number of firms listed on a stock exchange has dropped by 41% in the U.S. and 55% in Europe. At the same time, listed firms account for a shrinking share of the highly disruptive inventions that have the most potential to boost productivity and growth. In the U.S., for example, listed firms account for only 8% of the most ground-breaking patents today, down from a peak of 34% in 1969. These two mega trends combine to make an ever increasing share of innovation “uninvestible” for most individuals who, owing to investor-protection rules, are barred from investing in unlisted firms. The objective of my project is to study the economic consequences of this increasing wedge in access to the financial rewards of breakthroughs in science and technology between “the few” and “the many.” Disruptive innovation creates winners and losers. Workers and savers can, in principle, hedge against the risk of losing their jobs or savings due to "creative destruction" by investing in the winners. Whether everyone or only the few can hedge depends on the extent to which disruptive innovation is publicly investible. I will measure the investibility of disruptive innovation over the period 1841 to today, taking into account that a disruptive innovation that is born private can become publicly investible as its creator goes public, is acquired by a listed firm, or sells the patent to a listed firm. Armed with this measure of risk-spanning, I will investigate how the economy-wide cost of capital is affected when limited investibility results in an unequal sharing of the benefits of disruptive innovation between the wealthy and the many. Finally, I will test if differential access to high-expected-return investment opportunities as more and more economic activity takes place in private markets can help explain the rise in wealth inequality.
Projet ERC : A-STEAM (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and Processes Engineering
Entité participante : Université de technologie de Darmstadt — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2498481.0 €

Metal fuels are emerging as a zero-carbon, high-energy density replacement for fossil fuels due to their availability and recyclability using renewable energy. Aluminum (Al) powder has been investigated mostly in air/O2 as an additive in solid rocket engines. Recently, Al continuous pressurized combustion in steam has attracted considerable interest for on-demand co-production of high-temperature heat and H2. Combustion in pressurized steam lowers flame temperatures and minimizes emissions of undesirable and hard-to-collect Al2O3 nanoparticles. Quantitative understanding of the dynamics of multi-phase and multi-scale Al-steam flames, driven by microscopic transport processes, phase changes, as well as homogeneous and heterogeneous chemical reactions at the particle level, is largely lacking. A-STEAM will unravel the fundamental properties of pressurized Al-steam flames for the entire scientific chain, from single particles to turbulent flames with millions of particles, through a well-orchestrated combination of high-fidelity simulations, advanced modeling, and tailored experiments. We will combine and develop our unique computational capabilities in fully resolved direct numerical simulations (FR-DNS) at the particle level, novel particle-in-cell (PIC) models considering particle-attached/particle-detached flames and Al2O3 nanoparticle formation, carrier-phase DNS (CP-DNS), and large eddy simulations (LES) of turbulent confined flames. The unique combination of numerical studies and tailored experiments will lead to a substantial breakthrough in knowledge by quantifying physicochemical processes in Al-steam combustion, bridging the gap between single particles and turbulent flames. Our numerical-experimental database of reference Al-steam flames, together with science-based best practice guidelines for future Al burners, will also empower the broader metal fuel research community and guide future system design and implementation of this carbon-free technology.

Mots-clés : metal fuels,aluminum steam combustion,zero carbon energy,on demand generation of high temperature heat and hydrogen
Projet ERC : InterText (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
Entité participante : Université de technologie de Darmstadt — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499721.0 €

Interpreting text in the context of other texts is very hard: it requires understanding the fine-grained semantic relationships between documents called intertextual relationships. This is critical in many areas of human activity, including research, business, journalism, and others. However, finding and interpreting intertextual relationships and tracing information throughout heterogeneous sources remains a tedious manual task. Natural language processing (NLP) fails to adequately support it: mainstream NLP considers texts as static, isolated entities, and existing approaches to cross-document understanding focus on narrow use cases and lack a common, theoretical foundation. Data is scarce and difficult to create, and the field lacks a principled framework for modelling intertextuality.  InterText breaks new ground by proposing the first general framework for studying intertextuality in NLP. We instantiate our framework in three intertextuality types: inline commentary, implicit linking, and semantic versioning. We produce new datasets and generalizable models for each of them. Rather than treating text as a sequence of words, we introduce a new data model that naturally reflects document structure and cross-document relationships. We use this data model to create novel, intertextuality-aware neural representations of text. While prior work ignores similarities between different types of intertextuality, we target their synergies. Thus, we offer solutions that scale to a wide range of tasks and across domains. To enable modular and efficient transfer learning, we propose new document-level adapter-based architectures. We investigate integrative properties of our framework in two case studies: academic peer review and conspiracy theory debunking. InterText creates a solid research platform for intertextuality-aware NLP crucial for managing the dynamic, interconnected digital discourse of today.

Mots-clés : unstructured text analysis datasets and resources in nlp cross document understanding document representation learning novel task definitions in nlp
Projet ERC : COLUMNET (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : University of Regensburg — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3453563.0 €

How is the percept of a smell generated from the fractionated representation of odours at the periphery where olfactory receptor channels detect structural elements of odour molecules? While this problem seems akin to the detection of a “Gestalt”/object by the visual system using its contours, there is a fundamental difference between olfaction and vision due to the discontinuous, non-topographical nature of odour representation. Recently my group has discovered intriguing subcellular mechanisms of the neuronal microcircuits prevalent in the olfactory bulb that may enable flexible and energy-efficient non-topographical odour representation. These microcircuits connect distant olfactory receptor channel columns with each other and operate in a previously unknown activity-dependent manner. Here we aim to translate these findings from the synaptic to the systemic level, and test our hypotheses regarding the synchronization mechanism of co-active receptor channel columns in the gamma regime which will then allow the combinatorial synthesis of the odour percept in the olfactory cortex. By combining olfactory stimulation of our semi-intact nose-brain preparation with state-of-the-art imaging techniques with unprecedented large-scale spatio-temporal resolution (3D two-photon imaging of voltage-sensitive dyes), we will study the interaction between the neuronal ensembles belonging to columnar channels. This system-level understanding will be complemented by in-depth investigation of activity-dependent output of individual synapses in acute brain slices. Next, we will test whether columnar activity upon odour stimulation is amplified by a local mechanism recently discovered by our lab that links blood vessel pulsations to oscillatory neural activity. Finally, we will integrate our results into a realistic computational network model of the olfactory bulb. COLUMNET will significantly advance our understanding of olfactory perception.

Mots-clés : olfaction,neural network oscillation,olfactory coding,columnar processing,vasculoneuronal coupling
Projet ERC : NSC-PLAS (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Université de Valence — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499783.75 €

Somatic stem cells (SCs) sustain tissue renewal and regeneration in adult mammals. The maintenance of their stemness and long-lasting preservation in cohabitation with differentiated progeny at specific niches poses these cells to a considerable challenge. To deal with it, SCs display a complex network of yet to be fully uncovered mechanisms that allow multilevel plasticity. Cellular plasticity indicates the ability of cells to reversibly change their phenotype in response to the microenvironment. In the subependymal zone of the adult rodent brain, self-renewing neural SCs (NSCs) generate new neurons for pre-existing olfactory circuits. It is clear that NSCs must be endowed with plasticity properties, but the analysis of these potential traits needs a precise definition and a combination of comprehensive approaches to unravel their molecular regulation. Building from our new technologies and some preliminary data, in this proposal we will try to advance in the molecular basis and extent of the cell plasticity repertoire of adult subependymal NSCs by concentrating in three of its potential forms:  Epithelial plasticity, or the ability to dynamically and reversibly undergo epithelial-to-mesenchymal transitions, a form of cell adaptation that has never been conceptually proposed or evaluated in adult NSCs.  Cycling plasticity, or the ability to move in and out of the cell cycle and remain quiescent for long periods of time. This plasticity clearly exists, but its molecular regulation remains largely elusive.  Immune plasticity, or the capacity to evade adaptive immunity. Our view about immunity in the brain has dramatically changed in the last few years, raising interest in its potential interaction with NSCs.  Understanding cell plasticity traits in NSCs may contribute to understand not only NSC and/or SC behavior, but also glioma biology and to identify pathways to intervene in brain tumor treatment.

Mots-clés : adult stem cells,cell plasticity,epithelial mesenchymal transitions,cell cycling,quiescence,adaptive immunity
Projet ERC : Immuno-OCT (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Université libre d'Amsterdam — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2386250.0 €

Current clinical medicine relies on MRI and CT for structural imaging, and immuno-PET/SPECT for molecular specificity. The combination of structural imaging and molecular specific imaging provides detailed information about expression of proteins and cell surface receptors in vivo in humans. PET-CT/MRI has become an essential component of personalized medicine. However, the resolution of MRI/CT is just under a millimeter, while the resolution of PET is limited to about 2-10 millimeters, insufficient for early disease detection. Moreover, PET is associated with radiation burden of ligands labeled with a radiotracer and can image only one labeled ligand at a time. What is missing is the ability to image in vivo with much higher resolution, and to image multiple molecular targets and molecular interactions simultaneously. I propose to develop the optical equivalent of PET- CT/MRI with a 10 to 100 fold better resolution. To reach this goal I will integrate three-dimensional endoscopic Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) for structural information with depth resolved imaging of fluorescently labeled monoclonal antibodies for molecular specificity. To image the hollow organs accessible by endoscopy, I will develop the immuno-OCT technology integrated with miniature motorized catheters and the multi-fiber detection technology for depth resolved fluorescence determination for endoscopic immuno-OCT in catheters as small as 1.5 mm diameter. I will focus on esophageal cancer and lung disease. The proposed research has a much broader impact, creating a platform to study in detail therapy-tissue interactions longitudinally in vivo in patients, providing in vivo information approaching immunohistochemistry analysis. This approach will revolutionize the diagnosis and treatment of patients with a resolution approaching immunohistology at high speed over large volumes using minimally invasive technologies.

Mots-clés : medical imaging optical coherence tomography molecular contrast minimally invasive endoscopy fluorescent markers
Projet ERC : FARED WELL (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: B iological  Mechanisms , Structures  and Functions
Entité participante : Université libre d'Amsterdam — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499980.0 €

Photosynthesis, the process that sustains life on our planet by generating food and supplying oxygen, is astonishingly inefficient: less than 1% of accessible solar energy is converted into biomass by a crop. Improving photosynthesis is thus a promising approach to meet the increasing demand for food production. The capacity to optimally harness light is a crucial factor in the photosynthetic process, especially in light-limited environments. However, plants only utilize the visible part of the solar spectrum (400-700 nm), which results in more than 50% of the photons reaching the Earth’s surface being discarded. This represents an important limitation, especially for crops, as plants in the field are close together, and the light reaching the lower leaves is almost exclusively far-red (>700 nm). Until recently, it was believed that 700 nm was the thermodynamic limit of oxygenic photosynthesis. However, the discovery of several species of cyanobacteria, the prokaryotic ancestors of plant chloroplasts, that can grow in far-red light has shown that this is not the case. How can cyanobacteria use far-red light? Would it be possible to introduce the same mechanisms into plants to expand their spectral coverage and increase light-use efficiency? This project aims to address these questions by elucidating the mechanisms underlying far-red light acclimation in cyanobacteria and re-designing them to be compatible with the photosynthetic system of plants. This requires to address knowledge gaps related to the synthesis of novel pigments, their integration into photosynthetic proteins, and their impact on photochemical efficiency and photosynthesis regulation. For this I will combine in vivo, in vitro and in silico approaches, ranging from molecular biology to ultrafast spectroscopy and modeling, which is the trademark of my group. This project will determine if implementing a far-red response in plants is viable, beneficial, and a potential strategy for crop enhancement.

Mots-clés : photosynthesis,light harvesting
Projet ERC : CONFINED (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Université libre d'Amsterdam — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 129005.0 €

CONFINED will develop and validate an innovative, comparative, and global research agenda of confined lives. Confinement is a ubiquitous and unequally distributed human condition. While confinement sometimes can be protective, for some groups, not least the displaced on dangerous roads, the marginalized in urban slums and the detained in prisons, it can be a damaging experience linked to violence and inequality. With an empirical point of departure in different contexts across the global north and south, known to produce a variety of confined lives, CONFINED explores, 1) how certain people’s lives are rendered confineable; 2) how confineable groups and networks navigate discursive, actual, and potential practices of confinement, and 3) how and to what extent the concept of confined lives can transform our understanding of the practices and experiences of confinement across global divides in ways that drive theoretical innovation and help build new agendas for social justice. Through three interdependent and sequentially organized work packages, CONFINED proposes to explore confined lives contextually and ethnographically across the global North and South (WP1); to compare what confines people, how they make sense of their confined lives, and how they navigate confinement (WP2), and to conceptually develop and validate the approach through engagement with academics and experts locally and globally (WP3). CONFINED will carry out comparative, ethnographic field work to follow precariously situated translocal family network across four contexts as a privileged lens to understanding confined lives at the intersection of dangerous journeys, urban slums and prisons and camps: Denmark and Lebanon; South Africa and Malawi; Thailand and Myanmar and the UK and Sierra Leone. This will allow CONFINED to reframe the empirical field of confined lives and to generate a new conceptual language to understand one of the most important drivers of inequality world-wide.

Mots-clés : displacement,urban marginality,incarceration,family and kinship,state and non state violence
Projet ERC : EvoInHi (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
Entité participante : Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine — Pays : Portugal — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : GIMM
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1949537.0 €

The mammalian gut is an exquisite system to study ecology and evolution of microbes, and these processes are key for host-microbiome homeostasis. How microbiome diversity is maintained or lost is a critical question underlying the proper balance of this duet. Yet, our knowledge of the eco-evolutionary mechanisms structuring microbiomes is still in its infancy. Here, we seek to identify dominant modes of natural selection and host factors that modulate the evolution of their microbes. By leveraging knowledge on gene functions in specific strains and the power of mouse genetics and husbandry, we will unravel how natural selection operates to shape diversity in the bacteria that inhabit the guts of healthy and sick hosts. Microbiome evolution will be studied in several mouse models of disease with a focus on Escherichia coli as a pathobiont model, for which a deeper understanding of molecular mechanisms in health vs disease can be reached. Using long-term experimental evolution in vivo, high-throughput sequencing and theoretical modelling we will quantify the relative roles of directional, diversifying and fluctuating selection in gut evolution. We posit that resource competition drives the dominant selection mode in the healthy gut and that strong fluctuations in the environment, due to phage-bacteria co-evolution and/or due to hostmicrobe interactions, drive the selection mode in the gut of diseased hosts. We will further test the hypothesis that fluctuating selection leads to an Anna Karenina effect whereby the microbiomes of unhealthy individuals are much more distinct between one another than those of heathy ones. EvoInHi seeks to find the first empirical evidence that the predictability of evolution is higher in health than in disease, which will have a profound impact on understanding bacteria diversity and rates of specialization and how these can be used to modulate host health.

Mots-clés : natural selection,microbiome evolution,mouse models