Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : CHIMO (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed matter physics
Entité participante : TU Dresden — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TUD
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

The aim of this grant is to understand how cellular, tissue-scale and organismal left-right asymmetry arises from the chirality of molecular constituents. In many instances the actomyosin cortex, a thin and mechanically active layer of dynamically cross-linked filaments and molecular motors at the surface of cells, drives the emergence of chiral morphogenetic events. In the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, mesoscale chiral active torques generated by this active layer establish the embryo’s left-right body axis. Here we want to understand how mesoscale actomyosin active torques are generated at the molecular level, and how active torque generation in the actomyosin surface drives chiral morphogenesis of cells, tissues and organisms. Cells and tissues represent a new class of active chiral materials where both the force and the torque balance need to be considered, and we will perform a systematic and cross-scale characterization of active chiral biological matter. We will pursue an interdisciplinary approach at the interface of physics and biology. At the molecular-scale, we will use optical tweezers to measure active torques generated by single molecules of the molecular myosin and the actin polymerizing protein formin. At the cell-scale, we will reconstitute chiral actomyosin flows in vitro and characterize chiral dynamics of single molecules in vivo. At the tissue-scale, we will investigate chiral cell movements in a multicellular environment and unravel the physical basis of chiral tissue flow in vertebrates. Theory is essential at all stages, and we will build a molecular-scale model of actomyosin torque generation that will be coarse-grained to a generalized hydrodynamic description of active chiral matter. This interdisciplinary and cross-scale approach will provide fundamentally new insights into active chiral materials and the mechanisms by which left-right asymmetries arise in development.

Mots-clés : actomyosin,torque generation,chiral patterning,left,right asymmetry,morphogenesis,biophysics,modelling,theory,cell biology,c elegans,chicken,quail
Projet ERC : RegulHox (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cellular, Developmental and Regenerative Biology
Entité participante : Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ETH Zurich
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499628.0 €

The aim of this grant is to understand how mammalian developmental genes, which are usually pleiotropic, are controlled via long-range regulations and how chromatin partitions into large and discrete regulatory domains, generally matching Topologically Associating Domains (TADs). We want to understand how such domains emerged in evolution, how they are built during development and how they help implement enhancer functions. We will use a large genomic interval in mouse chromosome 2 containing the HoxD cluster as a paradigm, as it is covered by a large allelic series re-organizing the topology of this interval. Since the syntenic human locus (2q31) is affected in numerous genetic syndromes involving CNVs or large DNA re-arrangements, we believe this work will also help understand the mechanistic bases of human regulatory mutations. The approach will capitalize on our knowledge of mouse embryos, the implementation of cutting-edge genomic technologies and the unique collection of engineered mammalian chromosomes kept into living mice, which represent as many targeted re-organizations of both chromatin and regulatory topologies. It will require important technological development, in order to apply to mammalian embryos, methods (HiC) currently used for cell cultures or adult tissues. We think that the feasibility of this novel program is high, due the portfolio of experimental tools recently developed in our laboratory. Also, pilot experiments have been initiated to identify problems and preliminary results including the use of HiC on embryonic tissues suggest that the proposed experiments can be realized within delay. The novelty and originality of this program are in the interdisciplinary and system approach of genomic re-arrangements, as analyzed in vivo using recently developed methodologies, allowing to associate topological variations with regulatory modalities in a physiological context, during normal or genetically impaired embryonic development.

Mots-clés : gene regulation,chromatin structure,developmental patterning,mouse genetics
Projet ERC : STARFISH (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : University of Konstanz — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1462872.5 €

The aim of this project is to develop and test a new theory of variation and change in syntactic complexity, building on Trudgill’s (2011) theory of sociolinguistic typology and on the general architectural assumptions of Minimalist syntax. Trudgill (2011) makes the case that the distribution of simplicity and complexity across the world’s languages is related to the historical circumstances involved, with intense short-term contact involving extensive adult second language acquisition leading to simplification. This project will establish which syntactic features are "responsive" - that is, are susceptible to change under such circumstances. In the process, the project will bring together theories of second-language acquisition, syntax, computational modelling, and historical corpus linguistics to submit Trudgill's sociolinguistic-typological hypothesis to its most rigorous empirical test to date, in the domain of syntactic change. Crucial questions, such as the proportion of L2 acquirers and population structure necessary for simplification, will be teased out and addressed using computational modelling. We will look for responsive features in the domains of negation, Case, and subject expression, using the new generation of parsed historical corpora containing dated and localized texts at a high temporal and geographical resolution (e.g. the Corpus of Historical Low German currently in development), and put our theory and model to the test in these domains. The impact of the project will be to establish a new synthesis of historical sociolinguistics and syntactic theory that makes developments in each accountable to the other.
Projet ERC : C-SENSE (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and communication engineering
Entité participante : University of Edinburgh — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2212048.0 €

The aim of this project is to develop the next generation of compressive and computational sensing and processing techniques. The ability to identify and exploit good signal representations is pivotal in many signal and data processing tasks. During the last decade sparse representations have provided stunning performance gains for applications such as: imaging coding, computer vision, super-resolution microscopy and most recently in MRI, achieving many-fold acceleration through compressed sensing (CS). However in most real world sensing it is generally not possible to fully adopt the random sampling strategies advocated by CS. Systems are often nonlinear, measurements have limited dynamic range, noise is rarely Gaussian and reconstruction is not always the final goal. Furthermore, iterative reconstruction techniques are often not adopted in commercial imaging systems as they typically incur at least an order of magnitude more computation than traditional techniques. Thus there is a real need for a new framework for generalized computationally accelerated sensing and processing techniques. The research proposed here will build on the PIs recent work in this area and will develop and analyse a much richer class of hierarchical low dimensional signal models, accommodating everything from physical laws to data-driven models such as deep neural networks. It will provide quantitative guidance for system design and address sensing tasks beyond reconstruction including detection, classification and statistical estimation. It will also exploit low dimensional structure to reduce computational cost as well as estimation accuracy, challenging the notion that exploiting prior information must come at a computational cost. This research will result in a new generation of data-driven, physics-aware and task-orientated sensing systems in application domains such as advanced radar, CT and MR imaging and emerging sensing modalities such as multispectral time-of-flight cameras.

Mots-clés : compressed sensing,low dimensional signal models,high dimensional statistics,computational complexity
Projet ERC : FORTITUDE (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Nottingham Trent University — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : NTU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 167151.09 €

The aim of this project is to improve the legal capability of children. This focus on children breaks new ground because other research into legal capability focuses on adults. On paper, children are both empowered and protected by numerous laws and international rights instruments. In practice, however, we know that millions of children live at risk of violence, abuse and neglect in the UK alone. The proposed research seeks to create a range of resources that will empower and enable children who are at risk to enforce their legal rights independently; so increasing the likelihood of them accessing support and securing protection from harm. As well as targeting children at risk, this project seeks to strengthen all children’s capability to deal effectively with the many law-related issues that they encounter in their day to day lives. This is based on the view that children are competent social actors, whose views should be taken seriously. The project aim will be achieved through three work packages: 1. We will draw on the experiences of children to co-create a child-centred framework of attributes of legal capability. 2. We will co-create a range of game-based interventions that will both measure and improve these attributes, drawing on theories of play. 3. We will optimise the effectiveness of these interventions by determining what works best, in what circumstances, for improving attributes of legal capability among children. We will also develop a specification of the process by which such interventions can be created and optimised. The project will provide a range of game-based resources that will improve the lives of children by providing them with opportunities to improve their legal capabilities, as well as providing a framework for the development of these resources in other populations, such as EU states and developing countries. This provides the basis for opening up further lines of research for our team internationally.
Projet ERC : PALEODEM (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : CERCA Institution — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CERCA;I-CERCA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 835142.79 €

The aim of this project is to investigate patterns of population history and cultural transmission from the Late Magdalenian to the Late Mesolithic (c.15,000-8,000 cal BP) in South-western Europe. This period witnessed major environmental changes and cultural transformations on settlement distribution, technology and social organisation. Our project specifically addresses two major inter-related research topics: Firstly, to what extent demographic behaviour was driven by environmental factors; and secondly, how did regional population patterns influence cultural transmission processes. This project develops a new, multi-scale, methodological approach to study population patterns and cultural change between the Late Magdalenian and the Late Mesolithic in the Iberian Peninsula. First, at a local scale, our project will combine new empirical data obtained at open-air residential sites with well dated multi-proxy palaeoenvironmental reconstructions to understand the impact of climate change and hydrological stress on human settlement areas. Then, we will reconstruct population patterns at 4 different Iberian regional units analysing summed probabilities of radiocarbon date distributions from a new audited radiocarbon database. Finally, we will conduct computational network analysis at a macro-regional scale to identify how diachronic variations on hunter-gatherer settlement networks affected the transmission of cultural traits and the spread of technological innovations. With this multi-step interdisciplinary approach, we aim to provide a chronological-secure framework and spatially explicit context for the interpretation of population history, cultural change, and resilience to environmental changes through from the Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene transition to the Middle Holocene in Iberia.

Mots-clés : late palaeolithic,mesolithic,iberian peninsula,complex networks,computational modelling
Projet ERC : Powering_eTextiles (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Trinity College Dublin — Pays : Irlande — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TCD
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

The aim of this proposal is to determine the economic and technical feasibility of using readily scalable technologies for the development of inexpensive and high-performance ink-jet printed, energy storage devices based on two- dimensional nanosheets for smart wearables and textile-electronics. The realization of gesture control through e-textiles requires highly integrated sensors, which sets higher requirements for the formation of electrode patterns and power supply. In all these cases, a power supply is needed - which is usually the bottleneck in the development of smart textiles, since common power supplies are not flexible and often not lightweight, prohibiting their unobtrusive integration in electronic textiles. The development of such e-textiles is hugely shadowed by its power supply as a traditional battery is a burden for light, convenient smart-textiles. We believe that our combination of unique material properties and cost effective, robust and production-scalable process of ink-jet printing will enable us to compete for significant global market opportunities in the energy-storage space for e-textiles.

Mots-clés : graphene,2d nanosheets,mxenes,additive manufacturing,batteries supercapacitors,e textiles,smart textiles,inkjet printing
Projet ERC : PHOROSOL (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1885293.09 €

The aim of this proposal is to exploit the potentialities of confined pore spaces in technological processes related to applied photochemistry for gas sensing, energy conversion and environmental protection. I will focus on new light responsive nanoporous carbons which characteristics can be tailored at two levels (pore void at the nanometric scale and surface functionalization) during the synthesis to modulate their selectivity towards a given molecule (i.e. gas sensing) or efficiency in a given reaction (i.e. energy conversion, environmental protection). The dual nature of the nanoporous carbons with ad-hoc designed pore architectures acting as nanoreactors (confinement) and photoactivity defined by composition (chromophoric groups) offers new perspectives in the fields of light harvesting of applied photochemistry, and shows multitude of fundamental questions that are worth investigating to exploit this concept. Understanding of the confinement effects and the light/solid/molecule interactions is the key for integrating carbon nanostructures in a whole new array of applications. An example would be the design of multifunctional spatially organized photoactive carbons with high electron mobility, multimodal pore systems and chromophoric groups. These systems are expected to show enhanced diffusion and mass transport, with great potential in gas sensing applications where a fast, sensitivity and selective response is needed. I plan to work with functionalized light-responsive polymeric nanoporous carbons (mainly gels, graphene-oxide frameworks). A smart design of hybrid nanostructures introducing other confined photoactive elements will also be studied. The outcome of the proposal is to understand the fundamentals of photochemistry of carbon nanostructures for the implementation of best performing materials in different technological processes related to photochemical energy conversion for H2 and O2 generation, gas sensing and environmental protection.

Mots-clés : photochemistry,energy conversion,materials chemistry,light harvesting,photoremediation
Projet ERC : AMNIOGEL (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : University of Aveiro — Pays : Portugal — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

The aim of ‘AMNIOGEL’ is the development of human extracellular matrix (ECM) based materials, as radically innovative, highly versatile human-derived platforms for 3D cell culture, microtissue development and disease models establishment. In particular, we will develop 3D disease models that could be used as an enabling tool for personalized drug discovery, increasing our understanding of the mechanisms behind bone cancer. The proposed cutting-edge technology enables the culture of human cells in a physiologically relevant microenvironment for applications in cell culture research, drug screening and development, cancer research, tissue engineering, replacement of animal testing and therapeutic applications. The potential of this technology to reduce or completely replace use of animals for biological screenings is expected to have a significant impact in the 3D cell culture market and pharmaceutical industry by accelerating drug screening and development reducing associated costs. The innovation potential of our products is based on the fact that contain human biochemical cues (vital for cell function), is a complete xeno-free solution (avoids contamination) for human cell culture and easy to manipulate. It is worth mentioning that offers the possibility to be personalised (using the patient’s own ECM) according to the customer needs. Moreover, our culture substrates are easily processed in multiple geometries and in microarrays amenable to ‘organ-on- a-chip’ systems designed for high-throughput screening (HTS) applications.

Mots-clés : 3d cell culture,hydrogels,personalized medicine,disease model,osteosarcoma
Projet ERC : ACCOPT (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Université Catholique de Louvain — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCL
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2090038.0 €

The amazing rate of progress in the computer technologies and telecommunications presents many new challenges for Optimization Theory. New problems are usually very big in size, very special in structure and possibly have a distributed data support. This makes them unsolvable by the standard optimization methods. In these situations, old theoretical models, based on the hidden Black-Box information, cannot work. New theoretical and algorithmic solutions are urgently needed. In this project we will concentrate on development of fast optimization methods for problems of big and very big size. All the new methods will be endowed with provable efficiency guarantees for large classes of optimization problems, arising in practical applications. Our main tool is the acceleration technique developed for the standard Black-Box methods as applied to smooth convex functions. However, we will have to adapt it to deal with different situations. The first line of development will be based on the smoothing technique as applied to a non-smooth functions. We propose to substantially extend this approach to generate approximate solutions in relative scale. The second line of research will be related to applying acceleration techniques to the second-order methods minimizing functions with sparse Hessians. Finally, we aim to develop fast gradient methods for huge-scale problems. The size of these problems is so big that even the usual vector operations are extremely expensive. Thus, we propose to develop new methods with sublinear iteration costs. In our approach, the main source for achieving improvements will be the proper use of problem structure. Our overall aim is to be able to solve in a routine way many important problems, which currently look unsolvable. Moreover, the theoretical development of Convex Optimization will reach the state, when there is no gap between theory and practice: the theoretically most efficient methods will definitely outperform any homebred heuristics.

Mots-clés : convex optimization,complexity theory,structural optimization,fast gradient methods,large scale problems