Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : Monomark (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : VIB
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common cancer worldwide and the second leading cause of cancer deaths in Europe and USA. Its incidence and difficult early-diagnosis make CRC a primary focus in the oncology community. Although colonoscopy is currently the most reliable clinical tool for precise detection of CRC, the invasive nature and the incurred cost have hampered the wide application of this procedure. On the other hand, the fecal occult blood test (FOBT) and the fecal immunoistochemical test (FIT) are non-invasive screening tests that can be used prior to colonoscopy. However, they both lack the sensitivity or specificity required for an effective screening tool and they require meticulous dietary restriction, overall not reaching the full compliance of the general population. Thus, there is a pressing need to identify specific non-invasive biomarkers for early diagnosis of CRC. Within the frame of the ERC starting grant OxyMO, we investigated the diagnostic potential of blood derived circulating monocytes for colorectal cancer (CRC). Our transcriptome characterization revealed a CRC-specific gene signature that was further developed as the ‘Monomark‘ diagnostic test (patent WO2013/110817), which showed a strong diagnostic power for CRC detection. This signature was triggered by signals specifically released by CRC cells regardless of their stromal niche (primary tumor vs. metastatic site) or oxygen tension. In this prospective study, we will compare the strength of the Monomark signature towards the FIT test in patients with a positive stool test. Therefore, in parallel to the routine FIT screening, blood samples will be harvested and the monocyte genetic profile will be determined. This fundamental study, will disclose the diagnostic power of our biomarker panel head to head with the well-established FIT diagnostic test, a core prerequisite for the commercialization of the Monomark test as an alternative and more reliable CRC screening tool.

Mots-clés : monocytes,colorectal cancer,biomarkers
Projet ERC : COLOURTEST (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Sussex innovation centre management limited — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Organismes privés (hors enseignement)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 9222.0 €

Colour vision deficiency (CVD) is a genetic disorder of colour vision that affects 7.4% of European males and 0.4% of European females. Although there are reliable tests for diagnosing CVD in adults and older children, there are only a few tests for young children, and fundamental issues with these tests render them unreliable. For example, colours used in the tests are too similar for young children to discriminate given their immature colour vision, tasks are too difficult for them to complete, tests either over- or under-diagnose CVD, or are not widely accessible. Therefore, the current situation is that CVD can be reliably diagnosed only from about 5 years onwards. Earlier diagnosis would enable steps to be taken to ensure CVD children are not disadvantaged in early years education that relies on colour coded schemes and materials. Our goal is to develop, evaluate and bring to market an age-appropriate early years test for CVD. Our research on the ERC funded ‘CATEGORIES’ project is investigating the development of colour perception in over 1400 infants and toddlers. This extensive testing has given us specialist insight into the exact colours that are appropriate for an early years test for CVD. We have also developed age-appropriate tasks that measure young children’s responses to colour in a reliable and efficient manner. In the current project we propose to develop an early years CVD test in the form of an app. The test will use the colours that we have defined and the tasks that we have developed, and we aim for it to provide an accurate CVD diagnosis. The project will take the test to proof of concept and will establish the scientific validity, technical feasibility and commercialisation process. We aim that the test will be the ‘gold standard’ for educators, clinicians, scientists and parents. This will ensure that CVD can be detected earlier than is currently the case, bringing important and tangible benefits for education, clinical practice and research.

Mots-clés : colour,vision,child development
Projet ERC : GuMeCo (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Max Planck Society — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : MPG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Communication between the gut and the brain is essential for metabolic function. Sensory afferent neurons are key gut-brain connectors that monitor gastrointestinal (GI) tract organs, including the stomach, the duodenum, the liver, and the portal vein area, and thereby critically contribute to systemic energy and glucose homeostasis regulation. Disruption of this neural gut-brain communication develops in obesity and correlates with overeating, body weight gain, and insulin resistance. However, the relevant sensory neuronal populations innervating the GI tract organs along with the pertaining underlying metabolic neurocircuitry still remain to be elucidated. To date, advances in this field have been impeded by the challenges associated with targeting distinct sensory neurons of vagal and spinal origin in a cell-type and organ-specific manner, thereby making the accurate determination of their metabolic function highly difficult. Thus, the proposed comprehensive research program will employ a combinatorial set of modern molecular systems neuroscience tools and novel mouse genetic approaches to (1) elucidate the role of specific sensory neurons in feeding behavior and glucose metabolism, (2) determine the functional metabolic neurocircuitry of GI tract-innervating vagal and spinal afferents in an organ-specific manner, (3) study the effects of obesity on their transcriptomes, and (4) map their functional connectivity as well as synaptic adaptions to downstream brain sites. Collectively, the overarching goals of these four autonomous but complementary projects are to gain greater insights into the integral components of sensory neurons as gut-brain connectors in controlling metabolism as a first step to developing new therapies to treat obesity.

Mots-clés : neural control of metabolism,sensory afferent neurons
Projet ERC : AdjustNet (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : University of Vienna — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : Univie
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 229312.5 €

Communication networks have become a critical infrastructure of our digital society. However, with the explosive growth of data-centric applications and the resulting increasing workloads headed for the world’s datacenter networks, today’s static and demand-oblivious network architectures are reaching their capacity limits. The AdjustNet project proposes a radically different perspective, envisioning demand-aware networks which can dynamically adapt their topology to the workload they currently serve. Such self-adjusting networks hence allow to exploit structure in the demand, and thereby reach higher levels of efficiency and performance. The vision of AdjustNet is timely and enabled by recent innovations in optical technologies which allow to flexibly reconfigure the physical network topology. The goal of AdjustNet is to lay the theoretical foundations for self-adjusting networks. We will identify metrics that serve as yardstick of what can and cannot be achieved in a self-adjusting network for a given demand, devise algorithms for online adaption, and validate our framework through case studies. Our novel methodology is motivated by an intriguing connection of self-adjusting networks to known datastructures and to information theory. AdjustNet comes with significant challenges since, similar to self-driving cars, self-adjusting networks require human network operators to give away control, and since more autonomous network operations may lead to instabilities. AdjustNet will overcome these risks and achieve its objectives by pursuing a rigorous approach, devising a theoretical well-founded framework for self-adjusting networks which come with provable guarantees and incorporate self–protection mechanisms. The PI is well-equipped for this project and recently obtained first promising results. As the community is currently re-architecting communication networks, there is a unique opportunity to bridge the gap between theory and practice, and have impact.

Mots-clés : communication networks,network algorithms,routing,online algorithms,datacenter networks,optical networks,information theory,self adjusting datastructures
Projet ERC : archaeoscape.ai (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : École française d'Extrême-Orient — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : EFEO
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2748285.0 €

Compelling evidence is now emerging that tropical environments were cradles of innovation and complexity from prehistory to the present. Tropical forests in particular have long been considered marginal and inhospitable, but recent work suggests that several critical milestones were achieved in these landscapes. Vast expanses were terraformed by increasingly complex societies, often in a quest to mitigate the sharp seasonality of the monsoon. Ostensibly wild and pristine rainforests are now characterised as managed 'gardens'. The giant low-density settlement complexes of 'rainforest civilisations' anticipate the sprawling megacities of our contemporary world, and offer a laboratory for understanding the profound challenges that they create. To date, these emerging perspectives have largely been driven by advances in palaeobotany, archaeogenetics, isotopic analyses, and contemporary rainforest ecology. Remote sensing has so far played only a modest role in this broader agenda, in spite of the unique capability of lidar technology to 'strip away' vegetation and reveal archives of human activity inscribed in the Earth's surface. This program will tackle the core problems that currently constrain the 'lidar revolution' in archaeology: We will use a new generation of lidar technologies to greatly expand coverage in Southeast Asia, home to many of the most important and understudied rainforest landscapes. We will develop open access frameworks and infrastructures for aggregating, sharing and collaborating on new and existing lidar datasets. We will build on recent advances in artificial intelligence to develop generic models for automation and analysis, in order to move beyond localised, culturally-specific lidar applications. The net result of this work will be to create consistent, comparable datasets of human impacts on the Earth's surface, with a view to understanding trajectories of innovation and complexity in the tropical world from the deep past to the present.

Mots-clés : southeast asia,remote sensing,lidar,deep learning,neural networks,geomorphometry,historical and tropical ecology,complexity,resilience,sustainability,water management,agriculture,urbanism
Projet ERC : PROTOEYE (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Entité participante : Heidelberg University — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3021059.21 €

Complex animal eyes evolved many times independently from simpler forms. As already suggested by Darwin, the path to vision may have led from non-directional to directional light sensing and then to low-resolution spatial vision. Simple eyes in extant animals show a remarkable diversity of form and function and may hold the key to the origin of eyes and vision. We do not know why this diversity evolved when the organisms all respond to the same physical cue. Although we have a detailed molecular-centric view of eye evolution across animals, we lack corresponding knowledge of the physical mechanics and neuronal circuits coordinating the responses. PROTOEYE will study the diversity of simple non-visual and visual eyes and map the phase space of light-guided behaviours across animals. This will inform general principles of sensory system evolution and our understanding of the origin and evolution of eyes and visual circuits. The project will build on our long-term expertise in neural circuits and mechanistic photo-biology. We will study a range of aquatic invertebrates with distinct behavioural strategies, unified by the presence of simple eyes and non-visual photoreceptors. Instead of looking at eyes in isolation, we will investigate light responses from a whole-organism perspective focusing on circuits, behaviour and the biophysics of motion. In order to obtain entire neuronal circuits driving photic behaviours, we will use whole-body serial electron microscopy and connectomics. With laser ablation, we will explore strategies of light-seeking or light-avoidance behaviours. In high-throughput behavioural assays we will test navigation strategies and sensitivities to different wavelengths. With high-speed imaging and flow tracing, we will investigate how animal movement is shaped by light. This comparative and multi-disciplinary project will chart the functional diversity of simple eyes and provide a new framework for understanding the evolution of animal vision.

Mots-clés : eye evolution,neural circuits,marine larvae,light regulated behaviour,photoreceptors,microswimmers,biophysics,ciliated larvae,connectomics
Projet ERC : EvoConBiO (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Entité participante : University of Bergen — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1417862.0 €

Complex life on Earth is powered by bioenergetic organelles -- mitochondria and chloroplasts. Originally independent organisms, these organelles have retained their own genomes (mtDNA and cpDNA), which have been dramatically reduced through evolutionary history. Organelle genomes form dynamic populations within present-day eukaryotic cells, akin to individuals co-evolving in a "cellular ecosystem". The structure of these populations is central to eukaryotic life. However, the processes shaping the content of these genomes through history, and maintaining their integrity in modern organisms, are poorly understood. This challenges our understanding of eukaryotic evolution and our ability to design rational strategies to engineer bioenergetic performance. EvoConBiO will address these questions using a unique and unprecedented interdisciplinary approach, combining experimental characterisation and manipulation of organelle genomes with mathematical modelling and cutting-edge statistics. This highly novel combination of experiment and theory will drive the field in a new direction, for the first time uncovering the universal principles underlying the evolution and cellular control of mitochondria and chloroplasts. Our groundbreaking recent work on mtDNA suggests a common tension underlying organelle evolution, between genetic robustness (transferring genes to the nucleus) and the control and maintenance of organelles (retaining genes in organelles). EvoConBiO will reveal the pathways underlying organelle evolution, why organisms adapt to different points on these pathways, and how they resolve this underlying tension. In addition to these "blue sky" scientific insights into a process of central evolutionary importance, we will harness our findings to "learn from evolution" in high-risk high-reward development of new experimental strategies to engineer chloroplast performance in plants and algae of importance in EU agriculture, biofuel production, and bioengineering.

Mots-clés : mitochondria,chloroplasts,organelles,organelle genomes,genome evolution,genome engineering,mathematical biology,evolutionary pathways
Projet ERC : EvoConBiO (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Entité participante : University of Birmingham — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 0.0 €

Complex life on Earth is powered by bioenergetic organelles -- mitochondria and chloroplasts. Originally independent organisms, these organelles have retained their own genomes (mtDNA and cpDNA), which have been dramatically reduced through evolutionary history. Organelle genomes form dynamic populations within present-day eukaryotic cells, akin to individuals co-evolving in a "cellular ecosystem". The structure of these populations is central to eukaryotic life. However, the processes shaping the content of these genomes through history, and maintaining their integrity in modern organisms, are poorly understood. This challenges our understanding of eukaryotic evolution and our ability to design rational strategies to engineer bioenergetic performance. EvoConBiO will address these questions using a unique and unprecedented interdisciplinary approach, combining experimental characterisation and manipulation of organelle genomes with mathematical modelling and cutting-edge statistics. This highly novel combination of experiment and theory will drive the field in a new direction, for the first time uncovering the universal principles underlying the evolution and cellular control of mitochondria and chloroplasts. Our groundbreaking recent work on mtDNA suggests a common tension underlying organelle evolution, between genetic robustness (transferring genes to the nucleus) and the control and maintenance of organelles (retaining genes in organelles). EvoConBiO will reveal the pathways underlying organelle evolution, why organisms adapt to different points on these pathways, and how they resolve this underlying tension. In addition to these "blue sky" scientific insights into a process of central evolutionary importance, we will harness our findings to "learn from evolution" in high-risk high-reward development of new experimental strategies to engineer chloroplast performance in plants and algae of importance in EU agriculture, biofuel production, and bioengineering.

Mots-clés : mitochondria,chloroplasts,organelles,organelle genomes,genome evolution,genome engineering,mathematical biology,evolutionary pathways
Projet ERC : NEWTON (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : University of Padua — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UNIPD
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1236030.0 €

Comprehensive seismic programs undertaken in the past few years, combined with emerging new numerical technologies now provide the potential, for the first time, to explore in detail the Earth’s interior. However, such an integrated approach is currently not contemplated, which produces physical inconsistencies among the different studies that strongly bias our understanding of the Earth’s internal structure and dynamics. Of particular concern are nowadays apparent thermo-petrological anomalies in tomographic images that are generated by the unaccounted-for anisotropic structure of the mantle and that are commonly confused with real thermo-petrological features. Given the diffuse mantle seismic anisotropy, apparent thermo-petrological anomalies contaminate most tomographic models against which tectono-magmatic models are validated, representing a critical issue for the present-day window. Here we aim to develop a new methodology that combines state-of-the-art geodynamic modelling and seismological methods. The new methodology will allow building robust anisotropic tomographic models that will exploit anisotropy predictions from petrological-thermomechanical modelling to decompose velocity anomalies into isotropic (true thermo-petrological) and anisotropic (mechanically-induced) components. As a major outcome, we expect to provide a new, geodynamically and seismologically constrained perspective of the current deep structure and tectono-magmatic evolution of different tectonic settings. This new methodology will be applied to the Mediterranean and the Cascadia subduction zone where, despite the abundant seismological observations, large uncertainties about the subsurface structure and tectono-magmatic evolution persist. Furthermore, we plan to develop a new inversion technique for seismic anisotropy, and release an open source, sophisticated code for mantle fabric modelling, which will allow coupling geodynamic and seismological modelling in other tectonic settings.

Mots-clés : seismic tomography,seismic anisotropy,apparent anomalies,geodynamic modelling,subduction
Projet ERC : 321 (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and communication engineering
Entité participante : Polytechnic University of Turin — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

Computational Electromagnetics (CEM) is the scientific field at the origin of all new modeling and simulation tools required by the constantly arising design challenges of emerging and future technologies in applied electromagnetics. As in many other technological fields, however, the trend in all emerging technologies in electromagnetic engineering is going towards miniaturized, higher density and multi-scale scenarios. Computationally speaking this translates in the steep increase of the number of degrees of freedom. Given that the design cost (the cost of a multi-right-hand side problem dominated by matrix inversion) can scale as badly as cubically with these degrees of freedom, this fact, as pointed out by many, will sensibly compromise the practical impact of CEM on future and emerging technologies. For this reason, the CEM scientific community has been looking for years for a FFT-like paradigm shift: a dynamic fast direct solver providing a design cost that would scale only linearly with the degrees of freedom. Such a fast solver is considered today a Holy Grail of the discipline. The Grand Challenge of 321 will be to tackle this Holy Grail in Computational Electromagnetics by investigating a dynamic Fast Direct Solver for Maxwell Problems that would run in a linear-instead-of-cubic complexity for an arbitrary number and configuration of degrees of freedom. The failure of all previous attempts will be overcome by a game-changing transformation of the CEM classical problem that will leverage on a recent breakthrough of the PI. Starting from this, the project will investigate an entire new paradigm for impacting algorithms to achieve this grand challenge. The impact of the FFT’s quadratic-to-linear paradigm shift shows how computational complexity reductions can be groundbreaking on applications. The cubic-to-linear paradigm shift, which the 321 project will aim for, will have such a rupturing impact on electromagnetic science and technology.

Mots-clés : fast direct solvers,computational electromagnetics