Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : CLIOARCH (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : Aarhus University — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : AU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1907638.0 €

Late Pleistocene/early Holocene Europe is said to be the ideal laboratory for the investigation of human responses to rapidly changing climates and environments, migration and adaptation. Yet, pinpointing precisely how and why contemporaneous Final Palaeolithic/earliest Mesolithic (15,000-11,000 years BP) foragers migrated, and which environmental or other factors they adapted to – or failed to – has remained remarkably elusive. At the core of ClioArch is the radical but, in light of research-historical insights, necessary hypothesis that the current archaeological cultural taxonomy for this iconic period of European prehistory is epistemologically flawed and that operationalisations and interpretations based on this traditional taxonomy – especially those that seek to relate observed changes in material culture and land-use to contemporaneous climatic and environmental changes – are therefore problematic. Hence, novel approaches to crafting the taxonomic building blocks are required, as are novel analyses of human|environment relations in this period. ClioArch’s premier ambition is to provide operational cultural taxonomies for the Final Palaeolithic/earliest Mesolithic of Europe and to couple these with interdisciplinary cultural evolutionary, quantitative ecological methods and field archaeological investigations beyond the state-of-the-art, so as to better capture such adaptations – almost certainly with major implications for the standard culture-historical narrative relating to this period. In so doing, the project will pioneer a fully transparent and replicable – and eminently transferable – methodology for the study of the impacts of climate change and extreme environmental events in deep history. In turn, such a quantitative understanding of past adaptive dynamics will position archaeology more centrally in contemporary debates about climate change, environmental catastrophe and their cultural dimensions.
Projet ERC : MALMECC (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Cultures and cultural production
Entité participante : Utrecht University — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 74318.35 €

Late medieval European court cultures have traditionally been studied from a mono-disciplinary and national(ist) perspective. This focus has obscured much of the interplay of cultural performances that informed “courtly life”. Recent research has begun to reverse this, focusing on issues such as the tensions between orality, writing, and performance; the sociocultural dimensions of making and owning manuscripts (musical and otherwise); the interstices between musical, literary and visual texts and political, social and religious rituals; and the impact of gender, kinship, and social status on the genesis and transmission of culture and music. These “new medievalist” studies have significantly enhanced our understanding of the cultural meanings of singing, listening, and sound in late medieval times. Taking a decisive step further, MALMECC will, for the first time, systematically explore late medieval (c. 1280-1450) court cultures and their music synoptically across Europe. England, the Low Countries, Avignon, Bohemia, south-eastern Germany/Salzburg, Savoy, and Cyprus have been selected for study as each was a vibrant site of cultural production but has been relatively neglected due to prevailing discursive formations favouring “centres” like Paris and Florence. Linking these courts in a large-scale comparative study focused on the role of music in courtly life but embedded within a multidisciplinary framework encompassing all the arts as well as politics and religion will reveal the complex ecology of late medieval performances of noblesse in unheard-of depth while at the same time throwing the unique qualities of each court into distinct relief. The project will apply an innovative research paradigm that develops a trans-disciplinary and post-national(ist), “relational” approach to the study of music in late-medieval court cultures. In doing so it will integrate all late medieval arts and re-constitute the fullness of their potential meanings.

Mots-clés : cultural studies,court cultures,entangled histories,art history,literary history,political history,history of religion,history of gender,manuscript studies,archival studies,anthropology
Projet ERC : AXPLAST (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : DZNE
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 941877.5 €

Learning and memory are the basis of our behaviour and mental well-being. Understanding the mechanisms of structural and cellular plasticity in defined neuronal circuits in vivo will be crucial to elucidate principles of circuit-specific memory formation and their relation to changes in neuronal ensemble dynamics. Structural plasticity studies were technically limited to cortex, excluding deep brain areas like the amygdala, and mainly focussed on the input site (dendritic spines), whilst the plasticity of the axon initial segment (AIS), a neuron’s site of output generation, was so far not studied in vivo. Length and location of the AIS are plastic and strongly affects a neurons spike output. However, it remains unknown if AIS plasticity regulates neuronal activity upon learning in vivo. We will combine viral expression of AIS live markers and genetically-encoded Ca2+-sensors with novel deep brain imaging techniques via gradient index (GRIN) lenses to investigate how AIS location and length are regulated upon associative learning in amygdala circuits in vivo. Two-photon time-lapse imaging of the AIS of amygdala neurons upon fear conditioning will help us to track learning-driven AIS location dynamics. Next, we will combine miniature microscope imaging of neuronal activity in freely moving animals with two-photon imaging to link AIS location, length and plasticity to the intrinsic activity as well as learning-related response plasticity of amygdala neurons during fear learning and extinction in vivo. Finally, we will test if AIS plasticity is a general cellular plasticity mechanisms in brain areas afferent to the amygdala, e.g. thalamus. Using a combination of two-photon and miniature microscopy imaging to map structural dynamics of defined neural circuits in the amygdala and its thalamic input areas will provide fundamental insights into the cellular mechanisms underlying sensory processing upon learning and relate network level plasticity with the cellular level.

Mots-clés : axon initial segment,deep brain imaging,amygdala
Projet ERC : BeeDanceGap (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Entité participante : University of London — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : U. London
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 24862.25 €

Learning from others is fundamental to ecological success across the animal kingdom, but a key theme to emerge from recent research is that individuals respond differently to social information. Understanding this diversity is an imposing challenge, because it is hard to replicate the overwhelming complexity of free-living groups within controlled laboratory conditions. Yet here I propose that one of the most complex social models that we know of— the sophisticated eusocial societies of honeybees— offer unrivaled and yet unrecognized potential to study social information flow through a natural group. The honeybee “dance language” is one of the most celebrated communication systems in the animal world, and central to a powerful information network that drives our most high-profile pollinator to food, but bee colonies are uniquely tractable for two reasons. Firstly, next-generation transcriptomics could allow us to delve deep into this complexity at the molecular level, on a scale that is simply not available in vertebrate social systems. I propose to track information flow through a natural group using brain gene expression profiles, to understand how dances elicit learning in the bee brain. Secondly, although bee foraging ranges are vast and diverse, social learning takes place in one centralized location (the hive). The social sciences now offer powerful new tools to analyze social networks, and I will use a cutting-edge network-based modelling approach to understand how the importance of social learning mechanisms shifts with ecology. In the face of global pollinator decline, understanding the contribution of foraging drivers to colony success has never been more pressing, but the importance of the dance language reaches far beyond food security concerns. This research integrates proximate and ultimate perspectives to produce a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary program; a high-risk, high-gain journey into new territory for understanding animal communication.

Mots-clés : social learning,communication,pollinator behaviour
Projet ERC : ASEA (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : Ghent University — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UGent
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1921250.0 €

Legacies of slavery tend to affect societies deeply, but in inland East Africa have remained little explored. This project aims [1] to establish what happened to the hundreds of thousands of slaves present in mainland East Africa in ca. 1900 and to their descendants over the twentieth century, [2] to explain why the aftermath of slavery is so little discussed in the written sources and historiography of the region, and [3] to trace the social and political legacies of slavery up to the present. It will combine historical and anthropological methods, and, besides post-slavery, addresses questions pertaining to public history, social mobility, marginality and inequality, gender, and understandings of freedom. It pursues them through a series of place-specific case-studies tracing different courses and outcomes within the region, and through comparative work, both between the case studies and with studies on the aftermath of slavery in West Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Americas. The project is ground-breaking through its long-term time frame, its wide-ranging combination of methods, and in questioning established assumptions, e.g. about the meaning of ‘freedom’ for ex-slaves. It is high-risk in the sense that the field researchers leading the case studies will need good knowledge of Swahili, good social contacts and the flexibility to identify and follow emerging leads wherever they take them. It is feasible because the proposed research program and conceptual frameworks can be adapted as the work develops, and given the obscurity of the regions, groups and questions involved, the resulting gains to knowledge will be major. It is high-gain because it will fill a gaping hole in current knowledge, and establish how people in East Africa coped with the toxic legacy of slavery, which often presents intractable problems, apparently with little disruption. The resulting comparisons will contribute to a better understanding of tensions in other post-slavery societies.

Mots-clés : historical anthropology,post slavery,histories of  freedom
Projet ERC : Silencer (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems
Entité participante : Leiden University Medical Center — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LUMC
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1750000.0 €

Less than 1.5% of the human genome contains protein coding information of the estimated 25,000 genes. The rest of the non-coding genome includes many regulatory elements that control the spatial and temporal transcription of genes. With the help of the non-coding regulatory elements, the diverse cell types and tissues of a complex human body could be derived from the combinational expression of a limited number of genes from the same copy of the genome. Most regulatory elements (REs) have been characterized extensively, e.g. promoters, enhancers and insulators. These REs have been implicated to play very important roles in cell physiology, tissue development and disease onsets. Surprisingly, one class of REs—silencers—which repress the transcription of genes, have not been systematically characterized and studied. I have developed a lentiviral system to systematically identify functional silencer elements. In the small-scale proof-of-principle experiments, by focusing on the transcriptional factor (TF) accessible DNA sequences, I showed that this system is robust to identify novel and bona fide silencers, which could be validated using complementary functional assays such as luciferase and CRISPR knockout assays. In this proposed research plan, I aim to identify silencers in an unbiased way, rather than focusing on TF accessible regions, to have a more general understanding of the biology of silencers. Based on the unbiased identification of silencers, I aim to identify a general pattern of epigenetic modifications of silencers, unique combination of sequence motifs, responsible regulatory TFs, biological pathways that are regulated by silencers, diseases that might be related to mutations in silencers, and finally better manipulation strategies of silencers.

Mots-clés : non coding genome,silencer,promoter,enhancer,screen,massively parallel reporter assays,dcas9 mediated proximal labeling,epigenetic
Projet ERC : YlideLigands (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Ruhr University Bochum — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : RUB
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Lewis bases are a fundamental class of compounds that are of utmost importance in almost any chemical transformation. According to the HSAB concept, they determine important properties such as the stability or solubility of compounds or the selectivity of reactions. Yet, Lewis bases are used far beyond simple acid-base pairs. In coordination chemistry they act as efficient σ-donor ligands, which crucially affect the electronics of the metal and thus its reactivity. Additionally, bulky Lewis bases as part of Frustrated Lewis Pairs are applicable in bond activation reactions and also in catalysis. Typical Lewis bases are neutral compounds with a free pair of electrons, such as amines or phosphines. In contrast, carbon-centred Lewis bases such as carbenes have long been underestimated due to their usually high reactivity and sensitivity. Yet, the last decades have revealed a revolution in this context. Carbenes in particular have proven to be powerful reagents not only as ligands, but also in organocatalysis and bond activation chemistry. Bisylides and their dianionic congeners (methandiides) with formally two electron pairs at carbon are further classes of carbon bases that have started to find applications, but which are still profoundly underdeveloped. This project takes aim at the development and application of novel ylidic, carbon-centred Lewis bases. By means of a smart molecular design, systems with unusual electronic properties and donor capacities will be prepared and their reactivity towards main group element compounds and transition metal complexes will be explored. Employing experimental and computational methods a fundamental understanding of the electronic structure and its influencing factors will be provided. This will allow a manipulation and tailoring of the properties and reactivities and thus open applications such as in bond activation reactions or their use as electronically flexible ligands in catalytically active metal complexes.

Mots-clés : ligand design,s block metal,ylide compounds
Projet ERC : LiVoX (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Karlsruhe Institute of Technology — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : KIT
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

LiVoX will make our NMR microchip sensor market-ready for novel applications such as foodstuff testing, compound screening for example on cell-based assays, or biopsy monitoring for hospitals. By turning NMR sensors into consumables, LiVoX will achieve a paradigm shift that will open up these new markets. We are convinced that the sensors will be readily accepted by the market, since they already work with established and installed NMR hardware, and provide dramatically increased NMR measurement sensitivity. LiVoX will take a mass-producible NMR microchip sensor that is currently at technology readiness level (TRL) 6 at a university laboratory, and scale up the manufacturing towards wafer-scale mass production, by outsourcing the majority of the manufacturing steps. LiVoX will implement quality control procedures for production and sensor function, and will perform extensive beta testing at application sites, to drive the microchip sensors right up to commercialisation readiness at TRL 9. It is the clear goal of LiVoX to transfer the microchip sensor manufacturing process to a startup company at the end of this one year ramp-up period. LiVoX will remove the last barriers that remain for introduction of the microchip sensors into the marketplace.

Mots-clés : microchip nmr sensor,consumable sensor,ramped up wafer scale manufacturing
Projet ERC : PosLieRep (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Heidelberg University — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 207937.41 €

Lie groups lie at the heart of mathematics. They play an important role in geometry, analysis, number theory, algebraic geometry and representation theory. As they describe symmetries of a space or a system they also appear prominently in theoretical physics. Not every system realizes the full amount of symmetry, it is therefore of key importance to investigate not only Lie groups, but also their subgroups, and in particular their discrete subgroups, which are often linked to geometric or arithmetic structures. This projects builds upon new developments in the theory of Lie groups, in particular the intro- duction of total positivity in split real Lie groups on the one hand and new exiciting phenomena in the study of discrete subgroups, in particular the emergence of higher Teichmüller spaces. Higher Teichmüller spaces generalize the classical theory of Fricke-Teichmüller space in the context of simple Lie groups of higher rank. The existence of higher Teichmu ̈ller spaces came as a surprise, and their discovery and investigation led to various other interesting developments, including an exciting interplay with the theory of Higgs bundles as well as with supersymmetric field theories in theoretical physics. In this proposal we develop a unifying framework for higher Teichmüller spaces, which comprises the two known families, Hitchin components and maximal representations, but conjecturally also two new families. The basis for this conjectural unified theory lies in a new notion of positivity in Lie groups, which generalizes Lusztig’s total positivity in the context of arbitrary real Lie groups that are not necessarily split. This generalization of total positivity is of interest in its own right and leads to many exciting questions and conjectures that will be addressed in this proposal. The three main themes of the proposed project are Positivity in Lie groups, Positive representations as higher Teichmüller spaces, and Symplectic geometry of representati

Mots-clés : discrete subgroups of lie groups,positivitity in lie groups,surface group representations,geometric structures,representation varieties
Projet ERC : PosLieRep (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Max Planck Society — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : MPG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1820078.59 €

Lie groups lie at the heart of mathematics. They play an important role in geometry, analysis, number theory, algebraic geometry and representation theory. As they describe symmetries of a space or a system they also appear prominently in theoretical physics. Not every system realizes the full amount of symmetry, it is therefore of key importance to investigate not only Lie groups, but also their subgroups, and in particular their discrete subgroups, which are often linked to geometric or arithmetic structures. This projects builds upon new developments in the theory of Lie groups, in particular the intro- duction of total positivity in split real Lie groups on the one hand and new exiciting phenomena in the study of discrete subgroups, in particular the emergence of higher Teichmüller spaces. Higher Teichmüller spaces generalize the classical theory of Fricke-Teichmüller space in the context of simple Lie groups of higher rank. The existence of higher Teichmu ̈ller spaces came as a surprise, and their discovery and investigation led to various other interesting developments, including an exciting interplay with the theory of Higgs bundles as well as with supersymmetric field theories in theoretical physics. In this proposal we develop a unifying framework for higher Teichmüller spaces, which comprises the two known families, Hitchin components and maximal representations, but conjecturally also two new families. The basis for this conjectural unified theory lies in a new notion of positivity in Lie groups, which generalizes Lusztig’s total positivity in the context of arbitrary real Lie groups that are not necessarily split. This generalization of total positivity is of interest in its own right and leads to many exciting questions and conjectures that will be addressed in this proposal. The three main themes of the proposed project are Positivity in Lie groups, Positive representations as higher Teichmüller spaces, and Symplectic geometry of representati

Mots-clés : discrete subgroups of lie groups,positivitity in lie groups,surface group representations,geometric structures,representation varieties