Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : A-PONTE (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Université de Turin — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2497392.0 €

Cancers driven by the oncogenic activation of the ALK gene include subsets of non-small cell lung cancer, lymphoma, neuroblastoma, melanoma, glioblastoma, thyroid cancer, stromal tumors and other hematologic malignancies and solid tumors. Typically, these cancers affect children or young adults in healthy conditions with a long expectancy of life. They are currently treated with ALK tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) either in first line or at relapse after other standard therapies. ALK TKIs reduce tumor burden dramatically, and often induce a prolonged state of minimal residual disease (MRD) resulting in several years of extended survival. Eventually, most ALK+ tumors become resistant to ALK TKIs by different mechanisms. Relapses occur in >90% of patients that are then left without efficacious therapies and face a dismal prognosis. This common pattern of evolution of ALK+ tumors, characterized by a prolonged state MRD before the fatal relapse, provides a window of opportunity to develop therapies that might be curative should ALK+ persister cells be fully eradicated. In this proposal, we will develop, test and validate a portfolio of ALK-directed T cell immunotherapies to achieve eradication of residual ALK+ cells during the MRD state induced by ALK TKIs. These immunotherapies include potentiated ALK.CAR-T cells for tumors that express ALK on the surface, and ALK.TCR-T cells for tumors that express ALK internally in the cytoplasm. ALK-directed T cell immunotherapies will be tested alone or in novel modalities of combination between them, with ALK vaccines or with other approaches to further potentiate their anti-tumoral efficacy. We will empower these ALK immunotherapies to eradicate MRD based on the ALK genetic alteration that is specific to each tumor. We envision that the combination of ALK TKIs with ALK-directed T cell immunotherapies could achieve a complete cure in a large subset of patients with ALK+ tumors before the onset of relapse or metastatic spread.

Mots-clés : alk cancer,car t,tcr t,cellular immunotherapies for cancer,cancer vaccines,lung cancer,lymphoma,neuroblastoma
Projet ERC : Mind-the-NEXUS (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
Entité participante : Université de Turin — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1279313.0 €

Since 2015, mediatised episodes of protest and hostility towards refugees in rural areas in Europe have contributed to the perception of an alleged nexus between reception and the electoral success of far-right populist parties. However, despite the increasing interest of academic research, a patchy understanding of the factors and mechanisms driving the emergence of an asylum-far right nexus in rural areas persists. Whereas public opinion surveys emphasise the nationalistic orientation of rural Europe, research on policymaking has unravelled cases of welcoming and pragmatism. Mind-the-NEXUS will address this puzzle by leading the first systematic and comprehensive study of asylum politics in rural areas that in the last decade have been facing multiple challenges due to the arrival of different waves of refugees in times of reduction of public services (e.g., schools, hospitals etc.). It will do so by focusing on five European countries – France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the UK – where municipalities represent key actors in reception policy. By adopting an innovative cross-country/cross-locality research design, Mind-the-Nexus will deliver a new understanding of the rural politics of asylum centred on the notion of Rural Political Arena (RPA), intended as the multilevel relational sphere where reception and integration policies take shape. Mind-the-NEXUS will deeply innovate scholarly and policy-oriented debates by expanding our understanding of opposition to refugees and FR politicization in still under-researched rural area. Through a mixed-methods approach combining Large-N quantitative studies on a newly compiled database, qualitative research on no less than 60 rigorously selected RPAs, and the first comparative rural elites survey, Mind-the-NEXUS will generate a ‘gold mine’ of data and break new ground in theorizing the meso-level institutional and political factors and mechanisms driving the emergence of an asylum-FR nexus in rural Europe.

Mots-clés : asylum,refugee reception,local government,local policymaking
Projet ERC : MACROMGR (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : Elte kozgazdasag- es regionalis tudomanyi kutatokozpont — Pays : Hongrie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : ELTE KRTK
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 345102.0 €

There are enormous differences in productivity both across countries and across firms within the same country. Not only is the average firm less productive in poor countries, the allocation of resources across firms is also less efficient. Good management is understood as one of the key determinants of firm performance. Why don't management best practices spread from good firms to bad ones and from rich countries to poor ones? In order to explain management practices and productivity at the macroeconomic level, we need to understand where good managers come from and how they are allocated across firms. I propose a new research agenda of the macroeconomics of managers. I will build three quantifiable theories to describe the market for manager skills and estimate them in new longitudinal data on the universe of firms and top managers in Germany (1991-2021) and Hungary (1980-2021). I will study the increased demand for manager skills after economic liberalization of the 1990s, the geographic and other frictions stopping managers from reaching their full potential at their ideal firm, and the spread of trading practices between firms as managers move. My research will show how the misallocation of manager skills across firms, space, and time can contribute to lower aggregate productivity.

Mots-clés : development accounting,management,assignment model,overlapping generations model,linked employer employee data
Projet ERC : ODELIX (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
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 : 2396711.0 €

Being a language of nature, differential equations are ubiquitous in science and technology. Solving them is a fundamental computational task with a long and rich history. Applications usually require approximate solutions, which can be computed using numerical methods such as Runge-Kutta schemes. Alternatively, one may search for symbolic solutions, which have the advantage of presenting the solutions in an exact and more intelligible way. However, such solutions do not always exist and may be hard to compute.  The present proposal aims at making the resolution of differential equations both faster and more reliable. We will undertake a systematic analysis of the cost to compute both numeric and symbolic solutions, as a function of the required precision, special properties of the equation and its solutions, and hardware specifics of the computer. This includes the cost to certify approximate numeric solutions, e.g. through the computation of provable error bounds. In order to compute symbolic solutions more efficiently, we will develop a new theory that relies on two techniques from computer algebra that were improved significantly in the past decade: numerical homotopy continuation and sparse interpolation.  Theoretical progress on the above problems will be accompanied by open source implementations. For this purpose, we will also implement several high performance libraries of independent interest: non-conventional medium precision arithmetic, reliable homotopy continuation, sparse interpolation, faster-than-just-in-time compilation, etc. Altogether, these implementations will validate the correctness and efficiency of our approach. They should also allow us to tackle problems from applications that are currently out of reach.

Mots-clés : ordinary differential equations,numerical methods,multiple precision arithmetic,homotopy continuation,sparse interpolation,high performance computing,asymptotic differential algebra
Projet ERC : FutureAntibiotics (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
Entité participante : Centre de recherche de Biologie de Szeged — Pays : Hongrie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : BRC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3479716.0 €

Although several new antibiotic candidates are in the clinical pipeline, the future evolution of resistance in bacteria may render them ineffective. This project aims to develop a framework for forecasting the long-term effectiveness of new antibiotic candidates. For this purpose, we will decipher the general principles shaping bacterial resistance to a wide range of antibiotic candidates currently in development. Using recently developed methods in our laboratory, we will study resistance evolution in bacterial ESKAPE pathogens at unprecedented resolution and address four specific aims. First, we explore the shared features of antibiotics with limited susceptibility to resistance. Second, we systematically map species-specific differences in resistance evolution with implications on narrow-spectrum antibacterial therapies that could remain effective. Third, we assess the clinical risks associated with resistance by studying the global biogeography and habitat-specificity of resistant bacteria. Finally, we systematically explore the potential links between resistance evolution and increased bacterial virulence. The outcomes will provide guidelines for future antibiotic use, aid in genomic surveillance of resistance genes, and facilitate the design of antibiotics with reduced susceptibility to resistance.

Mots-clés : antibiotic resistance,functional metagenomics
Projet ERC : PLUMAGE (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and R egeneration
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 : 2178325.58 €

Most animals display striking patterns (i.e., spatial arrangement of characters in typical geometries). Natural patterns vary extensively, but also display trends within given taxa. A major biological challenge is to identify the pattern-forming events that shape this typical phenotypic landscape. Here, we propose to study the mechanisms responsible for the formation and evolution of the avian colour pattern (i.e., the spatial distribution of colour across the plumage). We test the provocative idea that despite enormous apparent diversity, variation in avian colour patterns is in fact very limited due to early developmental constraints, most variation resulting from colour choice changes in a common template. To test this hypothesis, we designed a step-wise approach organised in 4 specific research objectives: first, we will identify broadly shared and group-specific colour domains in the avian plumage by performing a quantitative survey across the entire bird phylogeny. Second, we will pinpoint the embryonic origin of these colour domains by constructing a lineage map of the developing skin. Third, we will identify positional cues controlling the establishment of embryonic blueprints of the future colour pattern by performing comparative expression analyses and functional tests in species displaying relevant pattern variation. Fourth, we will uncover changes in mechanisms through which embryonic blueprints implement the pattern in the late skin by pinpointing genetic loci co-evolving with pattern changes and testing their effect in an ex vivo system. In each objective, our methodology opportunistically uses non-model species of birds and robust functional testing performed in multiple species. Together, this proposal represents the largest comparative study of developmental processes undertaken in natural populations of birds. Results will provide a comprehensive understanding of the developmental mechanisms underlying trends and variation in natural patterns.

Mots-clés : colour pattern,developmental constraints,phenotypic survey,cell lineage,functional tests,bird embryos,non model species
Projet ERC : SELFiE (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Entité participante : Université de Copenhague — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : KU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2271084.0 €

Our capacity for self-awareness is often considered a defining feature of human consciousness and in adulthood allows us to imagine how others see us, recollect our past and contemplate our future. Our work has shown that in infancy, the emergence of a self-representation profoundly changes developing cognition. Yet, there are currently no mechanistic accounts of how it could develop, and empirical investigation within contemporary developmental science is surprisingly absent. In the current proposal, I put forward the first mechanistic account of the development of a self-representation, drawing upon recent data from cognitive neuroscience. This new account articulates a biological foundation that captures the idea that it is in detecting oneself as the target of another person’s attention that a concept of self emerges. I propose a pathway through which caregiver communicative cues towards infants – particularly direct gaze – give rise to a belonging to the body feeling state via their modulating effect on the heartbeat and its afferent cortical representation. Motivated by a bias to seek the targets of others’ gaze, a concept of self emerges from filling a placeholder target with this feeling state. This theory will be tested in 4 interlinked projects. Project 1 examines the longitudinal relationship between early interoception and a conceptual self-representation; Project 2 tests the novel hypothesis that direct gaze alerts infants to their interoceptive signals and Project 3 builds on this to test the claim that early in life, infants encode direct gaze as 'about me' which then fosters the inclusion of new self-related events in a reinforcing loop. Project 4 adds a crucial cross-cultural comparison capitalizing on natural variability in caregiving to test the model described in this proposal. This project seeks to fill a crucial gap in our understanding of development, essential for any theory that seeks to fully explain human consciousness.

Mots-clés : self representation,self awareness,self concept,infants
Projet ERC : QuantAI (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental Constituents of Matter
Entité participante : Université d'Innsbruck — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2472435.0 €

Quantum mechanics is our most fundamental theory of physics. It has formed, and often challenged, our understanding of physical reality. We use quantum mechanics to manipulate and control matter and light at the atomic scale, and it provides the basis for many new technologies. At the same time, the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) is gaining momentum in science and basic research. ML is already employed in different areas of physics, mostly for big data processing and classification. But the development of AI is heading much further and is likely to transform basic science in the near future. In this project, we will investigate the use of AI in basic science, with a focus on quantum physics and, more specifically, quantum information. We will develop models of artificial agency which are beneficial for basic research, both from a practical and a foundational perspective. We will develop classical artificial learning agents that can be used, e.g., for adaptive schemes of quantum error correction and integrated in large-scale quantum computing architectures, the design of complex quantum communication networks, and the study of novel computational phases of matter. The models of learning agents that we develop will facilitate applications towards AI-driven quantum experiment and scientific discovery. Our focus will be on transparent and interpretable models for artificial agency that are beneficial if not needed for basic science. These models can be used in future hybrid laboratories where human researchers will interact with AI assistant systems. On the foundational side, we will investigate quantum agents and the role of agency in quantum theory. These investigations will shed light not only on the possible ways of learning in a quantum environment, but also on the physical dimension of AI, the explainability of quantum AI, and the consistency of quantum theory.

Mots-clés : quantum machine learning,learning agents,quantum foundations,quantum ai,quantum computing
Projet ERC : PLANETAFELSIC (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
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 : 2883478.0 €

A turning point for the whole planetary evolution, climate and habitability was the onset of felsic (i.e., enriched in Si and Al) crust formation 4.5 – 4.0 Gyr ago. To date, this onset can be traced using natural zircon mineral (ZrSiO4)-bearing rocks, as well as laboratory experiment and modelling. My project is based on cutting-edge experiments and modelling as well as field data acquisition on natural rock samples to construct a first comprehensive fundamental model of the primordial felsic crust formation and evolution on Earth, and very likely, Mars and Venus. My recently established laboratory experimental protocols and modelling approaches open a new window to understanding of how the zircon-bearing felsic magmas, rocks and crust can be produced from the ultra-mafic rocks (Mg, Fe-rich, and Si, Al-poor) that dominated early planet’s composition.  PLANETAFELSIC has four research objectives: (i) to identify and explore the rock-forming processes that controlled the formation and evolution of the primordial felsic crusts on Earth, Mars and Venus; (ii) re-evaluate what physical-chemical conditions are reflected by the trace element and isotope signatures of zircon formed and evolved in the presence of magmas and fluids; (iii) to constrain the initial steps of planetary geodynamics (i.e., rock-forming reactions, transformations and movements) and how they are recorded in the trace element and isotope signatures in mantle-derived rocks; (iv) to construct a geochemical model of the habitable conditions during the early evolution of the rocky planetary surface.  With PLANETAFELSIC grant, I will build a team dedicated to addressing these challenging goals in a comprehensive way. Ambitious, but feasible and timely, PLANETAFELSIC will significantly advance our understanding of how the habitable conditions could be formed on the planetary surface. This will pave the route for future missions to Mars and Venus and exoplanet exploration.
Projet ERC : S3 (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
Entité participante : Helmholtz Center for Information Security — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CISPA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

*What if we had software bots that tirelessly test, debug, and monitor our software systems?*  IT workers are expensive and scarce. So why can't we further automate boring, repetitive activities such as testing and debugging? The problem is that we lack computer-readable _specifications_ (so-called _oracles_) for what the system should do or not do. For decades, this _oracle problem_ has been a roadblock to automated test generation, trusted software repairs, and accurate monitoring of software. Building on groundbreaking research to infer input languages of systems, S3 introduces a unified approach to _learning oracles automatically_. It takes a given software system; _infers_ and _decodes_ its inputs and outputs; and runs _experiments_ to extract _models_ of how the system behaves, capturing its semantics by predicting output features for given input features.  These models, named _system invariants_, allow to _fully automate_ critical software development activities: TESTING. System invariants encode _languages_ for automatically generating test inputs and provide _oracles_ for checking test results: "In the TLS server, the <payload> in the <heartbeat-response> must be the same as in the <heartbeat-request>." DEBUGGING. System invariants allow narrowing down causes of software behavior ("The X.509 public key certificate is not recognized if <subject-name> contains a zero byte"). Generated tests and oracles ensure reliable automated repair. MONITORING. System invariants enable detecting abnormal behavior at runtime ("In 'log4j', logging a <user-agent> containing '"${jndi:<url>}"' opens <url>"). Problematic queries can be isolated and investigated until the problem is fixed. In the future, testing, debugging, and monitoring would thus be taken over by _software bots_ who would autonomously explore software behavior, report issues, and suggest actions to their human co-workers, boosting developer productivity and software reliability.

Mots-clés : software test generation,fuzzing,software debugging,software repair,monitoring,data formats