Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : 3TMAAP (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Réseau français des instituts d'études avancées — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : RFIEA
Type d'entité : Autres
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1651660.0 €

This project begins with a “book:” eight historical case studies detailing environmental change will serve to produce 8 machine learning training data sets to develop a methodology for the automatic analysis of quantitative and visual environmental data from historical aerial photographs. This will allow for a new approach to study the 1940s-1990s Great Acceleration, which caused unprecedented environmental change. Becoming ubiquitous in the 1940s, aerial photography has a sub-1-meter resolution which is key to identifying non-linear, non-monumental, and pre-industrial rural environmental infrastructure (e.g. trees, waterholes, fields) and how it has changed over time. Since satellite imagery only gained a comparable high resolution in the early 2000s, the ability to machine-read aerial photographs will quadruple the availability of high-resolution geospatial data, thereby allowing a more robust and nuanced analysis of environmental and climate change. The project goals are: (1) to develop a historical ground truthing method to enhance the interpretation of historical aerial photographs to imagine historical landscapes and how they changed; (2) to produce machine deep learning training data sets by deploying historical ground truthing to identify and extract a set of features from sample areas in the study regions; (3) to use a more systematic and more historically informed object-based methodology to machine read archival aerial photography that is deployable at different spatial (local, regional, global) and temporal scales and make it available as an Open Access online software to read historical aerial photography world-wide. By unlocking the mass data contained in archival aerial photography 3TMAAP opens a new path of research by systematically integrating historical ground truthing into the automatization of geospatial analysis, dramatically deepening the time depth of high-resolution mass data for historical analysis and geospatial and climate modelling.

Mots-clés : environmental history climate history archival aerial photographs historical aerial photographs historical ground truth historical data sets for machine learning automatic analysis historical aerial photography historical data and climate modelling new high resolution geo spatial data computing history
Projet ERC : SCAVENGERS (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : CERCA Institution — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CERCA;I-CERCA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2454563.0 €

Anthropogenic sites often emerge from overlapping actions and/or occupations that include disruptive processes. Consequently, the palimpsests that arise can have a disorderly appearance, which may complicate the interpretation of such sites. The problem is worsened when some agents, such as carnivore scavengers, act on the archaeological record, causing the remains to disappear and leaving no obvious signs of their passage. Such occurrences have important consequences for archaeological studies, especially when trying to apply ethnographically-derived postulates created in high-resolution temporal contexts. However, new interpretations that are more complete can overcome this problem if the behaviour of scavengers is modelled using controlled experimental programs with wild carnivores (neo-taphonomy). SCAVENGERS consists of monitoring experimental reproductions of hearth-related assemblages (like those described in archaeological contexts) exposed to different species of wild carnivores: hyenas, lions, bears, wolves, and other smaller carnivores. The results will then be subsequently tested on different Middle Palaeolithic assemblages using Artificial Intelligence through computer techniques based on convolutional neural networks. However, the main aim is to generate cross-sectional data that can be applied to all periods and geographic areas, overcoming the limits of traditional archaeological methods to make accurate inferences about past human behaviour. The results of this project will contribute to the development of a new paradigm, changing some basic ideas about prehistory. There is a risk of generating a huge and unmanageable quantity of variables from neo-taphonomy. However, accumulated information and experience will provide valuable data and information for other areas of knowledge, such as those related to naturalistic studies, animal behaviour, and management of natural resources/parks.

Mots-clés : prehistory,middle palaeolithic,hominid carnivore interaction,actualism,neo taphonomy,deep learning
Projet ERC : DM-Dawn (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental Constituents of Matter
Entité participante : Université Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz de Hanovre — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 149717.5 €

What is the nature of dark matter (DM)? This central question in physics could be soon addressed thanks to the unprecedented sensitivity of nuclear clocks. These Th-229-base clocks are set to overcome the inherent limitations of atomic and molecular clocks, which are less sensitive to the nuclear parameters, which dominate almost all motivated models of ultralight DM (ULDM) . Laser excitation of Th-229 has just reached 1:10^11 sensitivity. Given that a precision of 1:10^8 suffices to probe DM-models with world record reach (even before nuclear clocks are actually constructed), it implies that the era of nuclear clock supremacy has begun! We propose three thrusts that harness this revolutionary advancement to search for ULDM. The first is driven by our joint theory-experiment demonstration that the line shape analysis of the Th-229 isomeric state excitation may potentially lead to 1:10^21 effective sensitivity to ULDM, due to the direct-enhanced dependence on the strong interaction parameters. The second is theoretical and experimental exploration of the enhancement factor of O(10^5), that is currently uncertain, and cannot be robustly established. The third focus on studying the formal implications of the era of nuclear-clock supremacy. We provide projection for the reach of nuclear clocks for axion and scalar ULDM. We also demonstrate that a nuclear clock can be used as a QCDometer sensing spatially-dependent couplings, due to artificial source, or from super-Planckian-based physics via couplings to moduli-remnants. We further introduce a new class of non-axion ULDM models, that address the strong CP problem, where the Cabibbo–Kobayashi–Maskawa elements vary in time, in addition to the nuclear parameters. It could be tested, thus, at accelerators as well as clocks, which leads to a novel synergy between different frontiers of physics. The proposal transforms future technologies into a concrete search for DM and beyond, ushering us into the era of nuclear clocks.

Mots-clés : nuclear clock,ultralight dm
Projet ERC : PERSTACK (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Université de technologie d'Eindhoven — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2999926.0 €

Metal halide perovskite solar cells have advanced from an intriguing scientific discovery into a viable option for future renewable energy. Record single and tandem junction perovskite solar cells already provide power efficiencies close to 26% and 30%, respectively. The aim of this project is to achieve the next target in photovoltaic energy conversion by developing perovskite triple and quadruple junction solar cells towards efficiencies of 35% to 40% using cheap solution-processable materials and affordable technologies. This is a tremendous challenge that has not been attempted. It involves designing and making new materials and device architectures that push every single step in the conversion process close to its intrinsic limits, and eliminate any electrical and optical losses close to perfection. The project will focus on solving important hurdles to reach this ambitious goal. New perovskites will be designed by compositional engineering to create thin-film materials with optical bandgaps in the range of 1.2 to 2.3 eV. Unique spectroscopic techniques will identify the nature and location of the defects, either in the bulk or at interfaces with the charge-selective contacts, that give rise to nonradiative recombination of electrons and holes and that thereby contribute a loss of open-circuit voltage, limiting the performance. By adapting deposition conditions, using passivation strategies, and synthesizing new materials for the selective collection of electrons and holes these losses are minimized to provide optimized sub-cells in the required bandgap regions. Guided by optical modeling, monolithic triple and quadruple junction solar cells will be fabricated by stacking three or four different bandgap perovskite sub-cells in series using recombination junctions designed to provide near-zero electrical and optical losses. This challenging but promising effort can result in solar cells that provide power conversion efficiencies between 35% and 40%.

Mots-clés : metal halide perovskites,multijunction solar cells,charge transport layers,photovoltaics
Projet ERC : PPI-Glue (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Université de technologie d'Eindhoven — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2496596.0 €

Intrinsically Disordered Proteins (IDPs) represent one of drug discovery’s major challenges. Due to their high degree of conformational freedom, IDPs have no defined pockets for binding small molecules. Molecular glues that can strengthen protein-protein interactions (PPIs) are a revolutionary technology for drug discovery. The hub protein 14-3-3 regulates many IDPs via phosphorylation-dependent PPIs. Stabilization of 14-3-3 PPIs with small molecular glues provides a unique entry point to render IDPs druggable and mitigate the aberrant behaviour of malfunctioning IDPs, for example in neurodegenerative diseases. While inhibition of PPIs by small molecules has expanded the proteome suitable for therapeutic intervention, the opposite chemical-biology strategy of PPI stabilization by small molecular glues is, despite a recent surge of interest, remarkably underexplored. The lack of mechanistically understanding PPI stabilization impedes systematically identifying molecular glues and limits progress to drug IDPs. Based on compelling preliminary data, I propose here that mechanistic understanding of 14-3-3 PPI stabilization will play a crucial role in the discovery of molecular glues for IDPs and transform molecular glue drug discovery from art into science. We will tackle this central question by pursuing two key objectives: Objective 1 – Mechanistically understand PPI stabilization between the 14-3-3 scaffold protein and IDPs. This will address the underlying thermodynamic and kinetic processes, conformational selection, multivalency, cooperativity and selectivity; Objective 2 –Drugging the undruggable -biomolecular condensates and IDPs- via PPI stabilization approaches. The potential for PPI stabilization in the dense environments of biomolecular condensates will be uncovered and a mechanism-driven campaign to identify molecular glues for the 14-3-3/Tau PPI will lead the way to novel drug discovery for neurodegenerative diseases.

Mots-clés : protein protein interactions 14 3 3 molecular glues cooperativity selectivity
Projet ERC : FIERCE (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe Sciences
Entité participante : Institut de Recherche et d’Innovation en Santé de l’Université de Porto — Pays : Portugal — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : i3S
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 146613.75 €

FIERCE aims at providing the long-needed step forward to tackle the challenges of stellar activity on the search for Exoearths.  The detection and characterisation of other Earths, planets with the physical conditions to hold liquid water and thus potential life-sustaining environments, is a bold objective of present day astrophysics. This goal continuously pushes the development of new ground- and space-based instrumentation. However, the quest for other Earths is severely limited by astrophysical ``noise'' from the host stars, whose signatures distort the spectra that are used to detect and characterise them. Existing methods usually circumvent the problem without a detailed understanding of the individual sources of variability. This is insufficient to reach the required precision levels. To enable the full scientific success of major exoplanet research facilities a new approach is clearly needed.  With FIERCE, the PI will employ his competitive team, together with the strong participation in cutting-edge ESO and ESA projects and missions, to break through in this obstacle. The ultimate goal is to i) develop novel approaches to identify, model, and correct stellar spurious signals in radial velocity measurements down to 10 cm/s, and ii) obtain a comprehensive understanding of the impact of stellar granulation and activity on the detection of exoplanet atmospheres.  To this end, FIERCE will approach the problem of stellar ``noise'' from a whole new angle, building a dedicated facility, the Paranal solar Espresso Telescope (PoET). PoET will connect to the recently commissioned ESPRESSO spectrograph and, using the Sun as a proxy, allow to unambiguously identify and understand the sources of relevant variability in solar-type stars.  Ambitious, timely, and feasible, this project will provide crucial information for the success of present and future major efforts aiming at detecting and characterising other Earths.
Projet ERC : MUSCLE-QC (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: B iological  Mechanisms , Structures  and Functions
Entité participante : Research Institute of Molecular Pathology — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : IMP
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2498824.0 €

Mutations in certain proteins can cause their misfolding and aggregation, posing a potential threat to the health of an organism. Protein aggregation is counteracted by protein quality control (PQC) mechanisms that reduce the amounts of damaged molecules. As we age, however, the crucial surveillance mechanisms weaken and become less effective, leading to protein misfolding diseases. The most well-known protein disorders, or proteinopathies – Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and Parkinson's diseases – are characterized by the formation of toxic protein aggregates, known as amyloids. Current research focuses on such amyloid diseases, however, there seem to be many other, hidden protein disorders. In principle, every mutation in a protein can affect its folding and stability and may become pathological only when PQC mechanisms are compromised. To better understand this kind of proteinopathy, we will generate novel PQC tools and study muscle protein disorders in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. We will design dual-colour fluorescent protein reporters to monitor the misfolding and aggregation of disease-linked myosin variants, our model proteins. The ‘MyoState’ library, comprising hundreds of mutants with a broad range of folding defects, will allow us to study the pathological impact of individual myopathy mutations and investigate cellular rescue mechanisms. In C. elegans, myosin disease mutations cause characteristic defects in motility and muscle structure, which can be rescued by dietary restriction. This animal model thus provides us with a unique opportunity to perform genome-wide screens that will define the PQC network in muscle cells. By performing structural and functional analyses of key factors in this network, we aim to reveal the fundamental mechanisms of myosin quality control and its regulation. Our ultimate goal is to understand how the misfolding of functional proteins, whether due to mutation or age, impairs cell function.

Mots-clés : protein quality control,protein misfolding disease,proteostasis network,proteinopathy model in c elegans
Projet ERC : ERVolution (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Integrative B iology : from Genes and Genomes to S ystems
Entité participante : Institut für Molekulare Biotechnologie — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : IMBA
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2498943.0 €

The ongoing arms race between transposable elements and their host organisms is a central driver of genetic innovation and biological diversity. Yet, despite this crucial role, the underlying principles that govern transposon-host interactions remain poorly understood. The ERVolution project aims to gain critical insights into the evolutionary dynamics and rules of the ancient transposon-host conflict. The project focuses on the Drosophila ovary ecosystem and the diversification of insect endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), a highly successful group of genome parasites that have acquired the ability to invade germ cells from surrounding somatic cells as viral particles to multiply in the germline genome. Through a multidisciplinary approach that combines host and transposon genetics, single-cell genomics, machine learning, and controlled transposon invasion experiments, we will investigate how transposon-host interactions create biological diversity by driving molecular innovations on both sides. Specifically, the project aims to uncover (i) how infectious ERVs exploit cell biological processes in the host gonad for their soma-to-germline transmission, (ii) how ERVs diversify their compact cis-regulatory elements to optimally adapt their expression to the host, and (iii) how the host transposon defence system exploits an Achilles' heel of ERVs, their unusual nucleotide composition, to silence both old and new genome invaders. The ERVolution project provides a unique opportunity to uncover general principles of transposon-host interactions by studying the molecular and evolutionary processes of a major battle between multiple transposons and an experimentally accessible host model organism. The project’s results are expected to have far-reaching implications beyond Drosophila, particularly in the fields of retrovirology, the evolution of cis-regulatory sequences of transposons, and the fundamental question of how eukaryotic cells distinguish their own from foreign RNA.

Mots-clés : transposon host co evolution endogenous retroviruses piwi pirna pathway drosophila oogenesis cis regulatory sequence evolution ltr retrotransposons pirna biogenesis germline biology
Projet ERC : ENIMUS (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe Sciences
Entité participante : Université complutense de Madrid — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2463698.0 €

Amino acids and the reference nucleobases for RNA and DNA can be formed in space ice under high energy, vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) irradiation. This statement is based on twenty years of laboratory research and has profound implications in the understanding of the emergence of life in the Cosmos, the universality of the processes involved and the compatibility of life forms across the Universe. However, this laboratory work still needs to be confronted with actual, on-field measurements. Promising data have been obtained through in-situ techniques: the analysis of carbonaceous chondrites such as the Murchinson meteorite or the detection of Glycine in the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Unfortunately, neither of these techniques suits well a systematic investigation. Meteorites reaching the Earth surface represent a reduced and biased subset and contamination by Earth-based amino acids needs to be carefully controlled. Space probes such as Rosetta are very costly and limited in scope given the constraints in space navigation. Thus, it is crucial to develop remote detection techniques to carry out a comprehensive study of the distribution of amino acids within the Solar System, their relative abundances and their enantiomeric imbalance. According to recent estimates, this is possible at VUV wavelengths for optically active amino acids such as the very abundant alanine. The interaction between VUV radiation and optically active amino acids in space bodies is yet poorly studied. The formation of crystallites and complex structures, the interaction between the various molecules, the dependence on the VUV photon energy, polarization and flux needs to be quantified, prior to any attempt of remote detection in the Solar System. This project aims to carry such in-depth study and develop a laboratory prototype of the instrument to make, at the least, alanine remote detection feasible by a small probe navigating the asteroids belt.
Projet ERC : ADVANCE-AD (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Université de Lund — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia and a major global health challenge. AD has a long pre-symptomatic phase spanning several decades. The accuracy of clinical AD diagnostics is mediocre, especially in primary care. This results in suboptimal treatment and care, which is especially problematic in light of emerging anti-amyloid therapies. ADVANCE-AD aims to revolutionize AD diagnostics and prognostics and fast-track the development of new effective therapies by using novel blood-based biomarkers forbeta-amyloid, tau, neurodegeneration and neuroinflammation. First, my team will transform the clinical work-up of symptomatic AD patients globally by developing scalable, non-invasive and cost-effective diagnostic and prognostic algorithms based on novel blood-based biomarkers and digital tools. Second, disease-modifying therapies should be initiated already in the pre-symptomatic phase to be very effective. My team will therefore develop cost-effective diagnostic algorithms to identify AD pathology in individuals without cognitive symptoms, and prognostic algorithms to detect those most likely to develop symptoms and thereby benefit from new therapies. These new algorithms will then be used to recruit individuals into a pre-symptomatic trial-ready cohort to efficiently evaluate new anti-AD drugs. Third, new drug candidates for our trial-ready cohort will be identified using large-scale analyses of the novel AD-related biomarkers in biobanked longitudinal blood samples from already performed randomized placebo-controlled trials. Using this high risk/high-gain approach, we will evaluate if different classes of existing drugs (e.g. statins, GLP-1 agonists, anti-inflammatory agents) can halt development of AD and neurodegeneration. Finally, a novel genetic anti-tau treatment will be evaluated in this trial-ready cohort. ADVANCE-AD builds on world-leading research and will likely result in breakthroughs in early diagnostics and treatments for AD.

Mots-clés : alzheimer s disease,biomarkers,plasma,tau,treatments,pre symptomatic