Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : COMPACT (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499375.0 €

Model predictive control (MPC) is applied with success in industry for automating constrained multivariable dynamical systems in an optimized way. However, some crucial aspects of MPC design largely remain to be addressed to unleash the full potential of MPC in applications: the efforts required to collect experimental data, identify the prediction model, and calibrate the controller, must be reduced considerably; the controller must self-adapt seamlessly to cope with unforeseen changes and not require excessively demanding computer hardware for deployment. This project aims to address methodologically such aspects and establish a theoretical and algorithmic framework for designing the next generation of nonlinear adaptive embedded MPC systems from data. Firstly, to reduce data-collection efforts significantly, we will develop tools that enable the design of experiments based on novel active-learning approaches to nonlinear system identification, coupled with robust MPC schemes to ensure safe data collection. Secondly, to cut calibration efforts down drastically, we will devise innovative preference-based methods that can learn from calibrators' assessments and automatically detect critical closed-loop scenarios. Thirdly, we will develop methods for seemingly adapting the prediction model at runtime to cope with uncertainties and model mismatches not seen during the design, as well as methods for approximating the control law with different tradeoffs between the amount of required online computations and the obtained closed-loop performance. To demonstrate the potential industrial use of the methodologies and algorithms developed in the project, we will formulate and solve laboratory benchmark problems on an experimental robotic platform, a challenging system for data-driven control due to its highly nonlinear, multi-input/multi-output, and fast-sampling dynamics.

Mots-clés : model predictive control,nonlinear system identification,active learning,recurrent neural networks,nonlinear programming,robot control
Projet ERC : CODEBREAKER (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Materials Engineering
Entité participante : Université de Cambridge — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2498444.0 €

Over 100M people in Europe live with a digestive disorder, and this number is rising. The gastrointestinal (GI) tract is a complex ecosystem which facilitates digestion and regulates food intake in addition to regulating immune function in order to effectively guard against pathogens while tolerating innocuous antigens. It also acts as a sensory organ. The GI tract is connected with the brain via neuronal and hormonal signalling pathways which form the gut-brain axis (GBA). Dysregulation of the GBA contributes to local pathologies such as inflammatory bowel disease and is implicated in the development of neuropathologies such as Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis. Technologies for diagnosis of gastrointestinal (GI) dysfunction are underdeveloped and have not found widespread clinical utility. GI tract complexity has made it difficult to measure GI function and collect spatio-temporal information that could improve diagnosis or treatment. CODEBREAKER will generate a suite of conformal conducting polymer devices which interface with the GI tract, elucidating pathways of the GBA in health and disease. To do this we will develop new methods to measure key functions of gut: 1. Gut permeability (barrier integrity), 2. gut motility, and 3. enteric nervous system function. Recent, key technology advances in my group set the groundwork to enable CODEBREAKER. Our devices offer unparalleled functionality monitoring that can be applied on a variety of models and tissues of varying complexity. Where possible, devices will be tested on advanced tissue engineered models in vitro and perfused ex vivo tissues (e.g. rodent and pig). Where functionality is lost ex vivo or in vitro, in vivo experiments will be used. We will also investigate the use of permeability as an in vivo diagnostic compatible with endoscopy. CODEBREAKER has the potential to yield huge dividends in our understanding of how gut function and diet can affect our health, not just in the gut but also the brain.

Mots-clés : gastrointestinal tract,organic bioelectronics,gut brain axis,enteric nervous system,mucosa
Projet ERC : AXIOM (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and Processes Engineering
Entité participante : Université de Cambridge — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2493667.0 €

The proposed research will demonstrate, with industrial examples, how scientists and engineers can efficiently combine data with prior physical knowledge. It will leverage Bayesian inference for rigour, adjoint methods for speed, and fluid dynamics for impact. Bayesian inference has been applied to fluid dynamics before but rarely using adjoint-accelerated inference and optimization methods (AXIOMs). These methods are crucial for practical applications because they dramatically accelerate data assimilation, especially when models contain thousands of parameters. This produces quantitatively-accurate physically-interpretable models that extrapolate successfully in directions in which the physics holds. Furthermore, they quantify the information content of data and rank physics-based, physics-agnostic, and combined models by calculating their relative likelihoods given the data. The proposed research will exploit AXIOMs to achieve a 10 times reduction in scan time of Flow-MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) compared with state-of-the-art compressed sensing, transforming the accessibility of clinical Flow-MRI. This research will achieve a similar increase in the extractable information from experimental campaigns on gas turbine rigs, increasing reliability and reducing cost in a crucial European industry. It will also infer the rheometry of opaque fluids from a single Flow-MRI image, rigorously select the most appropriate turbulence model from data, and improve the robustness of widely-used model discovery algorithms. This project will encourage researchers to consider data in terms of information content rather than file size, enable the use of physics-based models alongside physics-agnostic models, and contribute to other areas in physical science through engagement with the UK’s Alan Turing Institute.

Mots-clés : medical imaging,model discovery,data assimilation,bayesian inference,adjoint methods
Projet ERC : BRIGHTS (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Materials Engineering
Entité participante : Université de Cambridge — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499998.0 €

BRIGHTS builds on the proposer’s discovery of high photoluminescence quantum efficiency, PLQE, from high spin states excitons (S = 1, 3/2, 2) in molecular semiconductors. This is underpinned by their recent development of spin doublet molecular semiconductors where bright spin doublet excitons support efficient OLED operation, particularly for red and near-IR. High spin molecular systems have previously been developed for their quantum properties but have been non-luminescent, preventing optical readout. The luminescent systems developed in BRIGHTS open up new spin-exciton science and new opportunities for optical writing, manipulation and reading of spin states. The core of the project is the development of new materials systems with high spin excitons that have high PLQE. These materials developments include: (a) high PLQE in spin doublet systems, with electron acceptor substitutions and designs for near-IR emitters, used to construct: (b) systems where photogeneration evolves from spin doublet to quartet, with optimisation of intersystem and reverse intersystem crossing via engineering of charge transfer states, and new designs using TADF emitters; (c) conjugatively coupled di- and poly-radicals. For diradicals this will focus on exploring the inter-radical coupling to engineer PL in both triplet and singlet manifolds. This builds on the proposer’s discovery of red-shifted singlet exciton PL from zwitteronic charge-transfer character singlet excitons.  These materials systems will be explored for applications in: (d) spin-optical applications for sensing. Optical spin pumping and optically-detected magnetic resonance, ODMR, will be explored and developed for sensing, at high and low B fields, and for possible biomedical sensing; (e) spin-controlled charge transport. FETs to study transport in field-doped radical polymers in the ‘Mott-Hubbard insulator’ regime; (f) new designs for solar cell applications with spin radicals with high PLQE.

Mots-clés : organic semiconductors,spin optical properties,
Projet ERC : ONESPIN (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed Matter Physics
Entité participante : Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CEA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3498300.0 €

Magnetic resonance spectroscopy studies matter by probing the resonant frequencies and couplings of paramagnetic nuclei and unpaired electrons. It is a cornerstone of modern science, with numerous applications in condensed-matter physics, materials science, chemistry, biology, and medical imaging. A counterpart is low sensitivity. Conventional spectrometers need large numbers of identical objects to detect a signal. This is an issue for systems with inhomogeneous properties, since their ensemble linewidth is then larger than the linewidth of the individual objects, which limits spectral resolution. The vision of ONESPIN is to apply magnetic resonance spectroscopy to individual objects, based on a new method recently developed in my laboratory. We detect individual electronic paramagnetic centers at 10mK by counting the fluorescence microwave photon emitted when they relax radiatively to the ground state, using a single-microwave-photon detector based on a superconducting qubit. The first project objective is to apply this fluorescence detection method to a large variety of individual paramagnetic centers (organic radicals, transition-metal-ion-containing molecules, enzymes, catalytic centers), which will yield the first single-center-resolved spectra on these systems. The second objective is high-resolution spectroscopy and imaging of the nuclear spins surrounding an individual paramagnetic center by combining hyperfine spectroscopy with fluorescence detection. We will obtain the first magnetic resonance images of individual molecules with single-nuclear-spin resolution, a long-standing dream of magnetic resonance. The third objective is magnetic resonance imaging with 10nm resolution of individual paramagnetic centers in a micron-scale sample by combining magnetic gradients with fluorescence detectionWe will develop new methodologies for single electron- and nuclear-spin magnetic resonance spectroscopy, using microwave photon counting at millikelvin temperatures.
Projet ERC : OVERNIGHT (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Entité participante : Université de Zurich — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UZH
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 245625.0 €

Anxiety and insomnia account for one-third of the global mental health burden. Prognosis is poor: chronicity and relapse are common because treatment effectiveness is moderate. While this situation calls for treatment innovation, the required knowledge on targetable key mechanisms is lacking. Their shared core symptom is hyperarousal, covering subjective, physiological and clinical indicators. Hyperarousal is not 'just another overlapping symptom': individual differences in hyperarousal determine severity, prognosis and treatment response across insomnia-, anxiety- and stress-disorders. Hyperarousal links their genetic and phenotypic overlap. Since hyperarousal plays such a pivotal role in the development and chronicity of these disorders, a transdiagnostic mechanistic understanding of hyperarousal would have major implications for the direly needed development of better treatment. This project aims for a transdiagnostic mechanistic understanding of hyperarousal across wake and sleep and use to this insight to innovate treatment. The project will do so by combining large-scale data-driven approaches with targeted testing of the novel hypothesis that hyperarousal may be reset overnight. Crossing disciplines and diagnoses, the project will first deliver an integrated account of the subjective, brain structural, brain functional and physiological hyperarousal landscape. This approach will deliver unprecedented transdiagnostic insights into the lifetime development and underlying brain mechanisms of hyperarousal vulnerability and its consequences for mental health. Moreover, this approach will yield both innovative state-of-the art tools, as well as practical tools, to quantify hyperarousal. These tools will be employed in both experimental preclinical studies and immediately applicable transdiagnostic clinical interventions expected to considerably improve the perspectives of people suffering from the most common mental disorders by alleviating hyperarousal overnight.

Mots-clés : sleep,hyperarousal,insomnia,anxiety,prevention,emotion,mental health
Projet ERC : FunChol (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Hôpital universitaire de la Charité de Berlin — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Charité
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499289.0 €

Cholangiocytes are the mCholangiocytes are the main cell type lining the epithelium of the biliary tree, a network of conduits which drain the liver from bile produced by hepatocytes. While the role of cholangiocytes have been broadly studied in the context of cholangiopathies, their role in chronic liver disease affecting hepatocytes is often overlooked despite growing evidence that they play a central role in disease progression, regeneration, and cancer. Thus, understanding the mechanisms controlling the regenerative potential of cholangiocytes is essential to develop new therapies promoting tissue repair or blocking tumour formation. However, the study of these mechanisms has been restricted by technical and conceptual barriers especially in human. Here, we propose to bypass these limitations by developing an innovative program of research combining functional experiments in organoids, single cell analyses on human primary tissue and preclinical studies in animal models. We will use this approach to specifically address the role of cholangiocytes in chronic liver disease. More precisely, we aim to uncover the mechanisms driving cholangiocytes activation, plasticity and transformation. Importantly, we hypothesise that these different processes are interlinked and share common factors. The FunChol program will systematically address these questions in the context of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD). This chronic disease and its progressive form Non-alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH) represent the most rapidly rising cause of liver cirrhosis worldwide and there is currently no therapy for this major health care challenge. Overall, this multidisciplinary proposal will reveal the molecular interplays by which liver injuries can affect cholangiocytes and how in turn cholangiocytes react to improve tissue repair or to aggravate disease. This research will pave the way for the development of new therapeutics controlling regeneration to limit disease progression.

Mots-clés : liver diseases,cholangiocytes,regeneration,plasticity,transdifferentiation and cancer
Projet ERC : Zeptometry (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental Constituents of Matter
Entité participante : Université Johannes-Gutenberg de Mayence — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : JGU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 755000.0 €

The theory of elementary particle physics, the Standard Model (SM), provides a successful description of the basic constituents of matter and the forces acting between them. However, it explains only about 15 % of the total mass in the universe, not accounting for the dark matter postulated in the face of astrophysical and cosmological data. The study of the universe at large shows that our theory of the smallest entities of Nature must be extended.  In the absence of a direct observation of new particles it becomes increasingly important to determine the parameters of the SM with the highest possible precision, as new particles and forces would modify their values through quantum effects. The existence of the W and Z bosons, and later the top quark, the tau neutrino, and the Higgs boson - the ultimate discovery of the SM - were all inferred from precision measurements before their direct observations.  A cornerstone parameter of the SM is the so-called weak mixing angle, which relates different sectors of the theory and is particularly sensitive to new physics. The objective of this project is to greatly improve its determination, at energy scales spanning four orders of magnitude, combining information from the LHC with low-energy data from the MESA accelerator. Detector techniques developed for the LHC will be used to optimise the measurements at low energy. The combination of all measurements will test the energy dependence of the weak mixing angle, below the Z peak, on the resonance, and for the first time above the Z, towards the weak scale.  Reaching these objectives requires improving theoretical predictions in the SM beyond the current state of the art, reducing the associated uncertainties. The simultaneous interpretation of the weak mixing angle determinations at all energies will test the SM, and probe new physics with sensitivity to mass scales ranging from 70 MeV up to the order of 100 TeV, corresponding to length scales of a zeptometer.
Projet ERC : BoNi-SENS (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed Matter Physics
Entité participante : Université de Wurtzbourg — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499826.0 €

The project idea is to implement a new quantum probe based on hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) containing spin defects to study the properties of artificially stacked two-dimensional (2D) materials and devices. The essential building blocks of such van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures are the quantum defects in hBN recently discovered by the PI and his team. These intrinsic lattice defects - negatively charged boron vacancies VB– - can be optically spin-polarized and coherently manipulated, allowing the read-out of quantum information during the coherence time. Our experimental approach is based on coherent manipulation of the spin state using high-frequency pulse protocols, followed by optical readout to explore the adjacent environment, in particular by studying the local lattice strains, pressure, temperature and magnetic fields. The unique feature of hBN is its non-disturbing chemical and crystallographic compatibility with other vdW materials, which gains a new fundamental functionality with the embedded spin centres and allows sensing in heterostructures serving as a boundary itself. Optical readout will be extended by electrical control of spin and charge states, which is an unexplored area and a major step forward in the development of quantum applications of vdW heterostructures. We focus on i) the enhancement of VB– emission and spin resonance contrast by coupling with plasmonic resonators to identify single defects never seen before, ii) the identification of the sources of spin decoherence of these defects, in particular the interaction with other electronic defects and hyperfine-coupled nuclear bath, and their bypassing, and iii) the exploration of semiconducting and magnetic heterostructures and electronic devices based on them. The project aims to establish 2D heterostructures as a flexible platform for new quantum applications based on the optical and electrical control of coherent states and mapping fluctuating external fields on the nanoscale.

Mots-clés : 2d materials,van der waals heterostructures,color centers,spin coherence,quantum sensing,hexagonal boron nitride,quantum memory
Projet ERC : SENATR (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Université de Wurtzbourg — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2498471.0 €

Deregulated expression of MYC or one of its paralogues, MYCN and MYCL, maintains the growth of most human tumors. All current models explain the oncogenic potential of MYC proteins by their ability to form complexes with MAX that universally bind to active promoters and the ability of these complexes to induce a tumor-specific gene expression pattern. While MYC conforms to this model during unperturbed cell growth, we have discovered two paradigmatic situations in which MYC proteins undergo fundamental changes in their biochemical state, association with MAX and localization on chromatin: In response to pharmacological or physical disruption of transcription elongation, MYC moves away from active promoters to form large, spherical multimers that surround stalled replication forks. These multimers contain transcription termination factors and form a zone that shields stalled forks from RNA polymerase. Second, MYCN forms high molecular weight complexes during the S phase of the cell cycle that do not contain MAX and, like MYC multimers, contain termination factors. Their assembly depends on RNA that is normally degraded by the nuclear exosome, arguing that they too form in response to aberrant transcription. The switch between heterodimeric and multimeric states depends on non-proteolytic ubiquitylation of MYC, which alters protein-protein interactions that retain MYC at promoters. Our data show that MYC proteins exist in a hitherto unknown dynamic equilibrium between globally promoter-bound heterodimers and multimers that form locally in response to perturbed transcription. We aim to show that these dynamics enable tumor cells to cope with stress arising from deregulated transcription and are crucial for MYC´s oncogenic function. We expect that inhibiting MYC multimerization will maintain normal growth but block the ability of tumour cells to cope with deregulated transcription and is therefore a valid therapeutic strategy for targeting oncogenic functions of MYC

Mots-clés : pancreatic carcinoma,neuroblastoma,oncogenes,myc,mycn,pediatric tumors,transcription,dna damage