Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : TOCNeT (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : Institute of Science and Technology Austria — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ISTA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1882244.0 €

The bulk of the research in modern cryptography goes into constructing new schemes for which stronger security guarantees can be proven. However, often it is not clear if simple existing schemes already provide the required security, and we just don’t know how to prove it. As these new schemes are usually less efficient, they are not being applied resulting in a large discrepancy between the security that applied schemes are supposed to provide and what is actually proven. This project aims at closing this gap in different contexts: we will revisit simple schemes (including widely deployed ones) using new tools, developed by us and others in the last years, towards proving much stronger security properties than what is currently known. Three research directions in which we have already made substantial progress and which we will further investigate are: Adaptive Security: Often we can prove a scheme secure against selective adversaries, while in practice stronger adaptive security is required. Until recently this was the case for constrained PRFs, the popular LKH multicast encryption and all known proxy re-encryption schemes. Last year we introduced the “nested hybrids” proof technique, which allowed us to prove adaptive security of these schemes. We will further develop and apply this technique. Symmetric Cryptography: Although symmetric schemes are the work horses of crypto, for most of them we only have non-tight security proofs which leave a huge gap to the best known attacks. We recently proved tight security bounds for HMAC (used for authentication in SSL/TLS, SSH and IPsec) and the Sponge family used in the SHA3 standard. Pseudoentropy: Computational notions of entropy have found many applications in the last few years. The tools available to manipulate pseudoentropy yield poor quantitative bounds, resulting in impractical schemes. We will continue our research towards establishing the exact necessary security degradation for manipulating pseudoentropy.

Mots-clés : provable security,adaptive security,symmetric cryptography,pseudoentropy
Projet ERC : cRGS (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : IBEC;IBEC-CERCA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

The cDAC ERC Advanced project develops and validates a theory of consciousness and its application to the understanding and alleviation of its deficits. cDAC proposes that consciousness is a virtualization memory system that monitors and optimizes the real-time control of perception, cognition and action realized in a multi-layered architecture. Building on cDAC, we have advanced and validated new concepts and methods for the diagnostics and treatment of cognitive and affective deficits post-stroke. The current PoC project will now propel these interventions into the real-world by integrating them with the Rehabilitation Gaming System (RGS), creating cRGS. cRGS will be built by the integration of several paradigms and principles underlying perception, cognition, and emotion advanced in the cDAC theory of mind. cRGS will be developed to tackle unsolved problems in diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cognitive impairments after stroke, dementia and depression that. affect more than 400 million people worldwide creating a severe health-related burden adding up to annual costs that are measured in trillions of euros, with depression being the leading cause of disability worldwide. cRGS taps into the latest technologies such as AI, VR, big data and cloud computing to provide treatment that does not require the presence of a health professional by building on the cDAC architecture for autonomous control. cRGS solves two significant obstacles in providing healthcare namely, the lack of resources and the lack of trained professionals. Concretely, this Proof of Concept will consist of the integration of the treatment paradigms created in cDAC to treat and diagnose aphasia, cognitive impairment, and depression in one platform. This prototype will be tested in terms of usability and adherence as well as its practical use at healthcare centers and at home.

Mots-clés : cognitive impairments,aphasia,depression,stroke,cognitive rehabilitation,virtual reality
Projet ERC : SAPPHIRE (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Cultures and cultural production
Entité participante : Leiden University — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1993378.0 €

The central challenge faced by linguistics is to understand linguistic diversity. Despite influential programmatic studies and sustained interest, many aspects of the evolution of linguistic diversity remain elusive. Yet, the potential value of understanding linguistic diversity is enormous. It could help us uncover specific past events such as migration and historical contact between societies, perhaps even in very deep time and, more generally, it can give us insight into the interaction between ecology and human behaviour and human cognition. This project will answer these challenges by focussing on the Upper Amazon in western South America, an area which forms a unique microcosm of diversity in which several sociohistorical layers of the continental population history are represented. The north and south are extremely diverse, and likely represent very old diversity patterns. Both areas also show signs of local language contact. The central part is dominated by three language families, which represent expansions of these groups into the Upper Amazon at different stages. This microcosm of diversity forms a unparalleled natural laboratory for understanding more about sociological dynamics and the evolution of linguistic diversity. The project will take an innovative multi-disciplinary approach to unearthing the socio-historical dynamics that have led to these various diversity patterns. In order to do so, geographical, socio-historical, and communicative layers of history are reconstructed and systematically compared, achieving a level of synergy between the disciplines hitherto unseen. Interpreting the (mis)matches between these layers allows for a powerful reconstruction of past events, (e.g. migrations, language shift, exogamy, trade), and sheds light on how these social dynamics shaped linguistic diversity, in turn unlocking the potential of linguistic diversity as a unique window on our past.

Mots-clés : population history,language contact,multi disciplinarity,south america
Projet ERC : iDysChart (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy
Entité participante : St. anna kinderkrebsforschung gmbh — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1241971.25 €

The central challenge for the immune system is to efficiently recognize and neutralize foreign antigen while protecting self. If the latter fails, autoimmunity and/or autoinflammation may occur, as observed in many human diseases. Though several human genes involved in the process have been identified we still lack: i) a comprehensive appreciation of all contributing molecular pathways, ii) an understanding of the interplay and epistatic relationships among the various elements and iii) a satisfactory strategy to counteract dysregulation based on an understanding of the regulatory logic. I hypothesize that there is only a finite number of pathways involved and that it should be possible to mount a synergistic strategy to create a first chart of the entire “territory”. Key to this endeavor is the identification of sufficient elements by mapping immune dysregulation genes to “anchor” the chart onto signposts of which the human pathophysiological relevance is certain. From these signposts, contextualization and integration is achieved by interaction proteomics and network informatics mining the existing data universe, validated through biochemical and imaging tools to power an established set of immune assays. While it may be preposterous to claim feasibility with one ERC grant, I propose that once such a chart exists, even at initial low resolution, it can help reconcile disconnected observations and coalesce future work while being immensely improved in accuracy and mechanistic understanding by the entire community. iDysChart will work towards these goals by 1) identifying novel monogenic causes of autoimmune/autoinflammatory diseases, enabling elucidation of fundamental mechanisms, 2) creating a network-level understanding of molecular pathways of immune dysregulation and 3) employing chemical and genetic screens to complement human disease gene discovery in predicting the core human immune dysregulome and investigating potential avenues for therapeutic modulation.

Mots-clés : inborn error of immunity,immunodeficiency
Projet ERC : CROSSINGSCALES (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems
Entité participante : University of Zurich — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UZH
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2411075.0 €

The central dogma in biology often invokes a bottom-up picture of life. However, at different biological scales, new properties in form and function arise that have a superseding causal impact on the behaviour of the lower-scale components from which these new properties emerge. These top-down or reverse scale-crossing effects must be taken into account in order to make predictions about spatiotemporally controlled single-cell fates, activities, levels of gene expression, or the functional outcome of cellular signalling. They can stem from the multicellular, the cellular, and the intracellular scale, and can be quantified using multiscale and multiplexed RNA and protein state imaging in combination with computer vision and data-driven modelling. The ability to comprehensively map these reverse causal effects across multiple scales has the potential to revolutionize most, if not all domains of biology and medicine. In this project, we will establish the importance of reverse causal effects in human induced pluripotent stem cells and early D. rerio embryos. To achieve this, we will develop a quantitative imaging method beyond the diffraction limit of light without compromising scalability in temporal and spatial dimensions. We will also develop a method that achieves scalable, transcriptome-wide image-based multiplexing of mRNA transcripts, and we will extend our computer vision approaches to higher resolution and to three spatial dimensions. These methods will be systematically applied to stem cell collectives grown in 2D and 3D, as well as to early embryos, achieving comprehensive quantification of nuclear and chromatin states, gene expression, subcellular organization, cellular states, and tissue-scale organization across millions of individual cells within the same dataset. These datasets will be used to quantify how, at different scales, new properties in form and function arise that have a superseding causal impact on the behaviour of the lower-scale components

Mots-clés : multiplexed imaging,emergence,scale crossing reverse causal effects
Projet ERC : ACCENT (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: Biological Mechanisms, Structures and Functions
Entité participante : University of Geneva — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UNIGE
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1498965.0 €

The centriole is the largest evolutionary conserved macromolecular structure responsible for building centrosomes and cilia or flagella in many eukaryotes. Centrioles are critical for the proper execution of important biological processes ranging from cell division to cell signaling. Moreover, centriolar defects have been associated to several human pathologies including ciliopathies and cancer. This state of facts emphasizes the importance of understanding centriole biogenesis. The study of centriole formation is a deep-rooted question, however our current knowledge on its molecular organization at high resolution remains fragmented and limited. In particular, exquisite details of the overall molecular architecture of the human centriole and in particular of its central core region are lacking to understand the basis of centriole organization and function. Resolving this important question represents a challenge that needs to be undertaken and will undoubtedly lead to groundbreaking advances. Another important question to tackle next is to develop innovative methods to enable the nanometric molecular mapping of centriolar proteins within distinct architectural elements of the centriole. This missing information will be key to unravel the molecular mechanisms behind centriolar organization. This research proposal aims at building a cartography of the human centriole by elucidating its molecular composition and architecture. To this end, we will combine the use of innovative and multidisciplinary techniques encompassing spatial proteomics, cryo-electron tomography, state-of-the-art microscopy and in vitro assays and to achieve a comprehensive molecular and structural view of the human centriole. All together, we expect that these advances will help understand basic principles underlying centriole and cilia formation as well as might have further relevance for human health.

Mots-clés : centriole,cryo tomography,super resolution
Projet ERC : CERDEV (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : University of Lausanne — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UNIL
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499885.0 €

The cerebellum is a critical regulator of motor function, which acts to integrate ongoing body states, sensory inputs and desired outcomes to adjust motor output. This motor control is achieved by a relatively small number of neuron types receiving two main sources of inputs and forming a single output pathway, the axons of Purkinje cells. Although the cerebellum is one of the first structures of the brain to differentiate, it undergoes a prolonged differentiation period such that mature cellular and circuit configuration is achieved only late after birth. Despite the functional importance of this structure, the molecular mechanisms that control type-specific cerebellar neurons generation, differentiation, and circuit assembly are poorly understood and are the topic of the present study. In my research program, I propose to investigate the transcriptional programs that control the generation of distinct subtypes of cerebellar neurons from progenitors, including Purkinje cells, granule cells and molecular layer interneurons (Work Package 1); the diversity of Purkinje cells across cerebellar regions (Work Package 2) and the postnatal differentiation and circuit integration of granule cells and molecular layer interneurons (Work Package 3). The general bases of the approach I propose consist in: i) specifically label cerebellar neuron progenitors and their progeny at sequential developmental time points pre- and post-natally using birthdate-based tagging, ii) FAC-sort these distinct cell types, iii) isolate these cells and identify their transcriptional signatures with single-cell resolution, iv) functionally interrogate top candidate genes and associated transcriptional programs using in vivo gain- and loss-of-function approaches. Together, these experiments aim at deciphering the cell-intrinsic processes controlling cerebellar circuit formation, towards a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying cerebellar function and dysfunction.

Mots-clés : cerebellar development,single cell rna seq
Projet ERC : SENSORTHALAMUS (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Spanish National Research Council — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CSIC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1034906.78 €

The cerebral cortex is organized into highly specialized sensory areas. Thus, it is fundamental to understand how these areas acquire and maintain their identity and functional organization. Challenging normal brain development and forcing the brain to the limits of plasticity, offers us the possibility to shed light on these issues. Accordingly, we shall use prenatal sensory deprivation as a model to understand the mechanisms underlying early neuroplasticity, events that could influence the natural organization of sensory cortical areas. Early sensory deprivation produces profound changes in the cortex, provoking the reorganization of both the deprived and the spared cortical territories. Classically, this adaptation is thought to require sensory experience from the intact sensory modalities. However, our recent data from embryonic deprived mice challenge this view, suggesting that a component independent of experience contributes to this reorganization and that the thalamus plays a pivotal role in these events. Hence, we now propose to adopt multidisciplinary and innovative approaches to characterize the structural, genetic and functional rearrangements in the thalamus following embryonic sensory deprivation, and to define the factors and mechanisms that drive cortical specificity. Experimental results from sensory deprived animals in which the thalamus and gene expression is manipulated in vivo, will be integrated to explain when and how neuroplastic cortical adaptations are triggered in the deprived brain. To further understand the rewiring capacity of thalamic neurons and their potential role in sensory restoration, we will adopt a high-risk, high-gain approach to reprogramme nuclei specific thalamic neurons. The novel information obtained will establish how sensory inputs and thalamocortical connections govern cortical activity and architecture, ultimately sculpting perceptual behaviour.

Mots-clés : thalamus,cortical areas,sensory deprivation,neuroplasticity,spontaneous activity,reprogramming,transgenic mice
Projet ERC : QuantumLight (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Norwegian University of Science and Technology — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : NTNU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

The chemistry of light-matter states (polaritonic chemistry) is a relatively new research area in chemistry. Recent experiments have demonstrated that molecular polaritons can have a profound impact on the outcome of chemical reactions taking place inside cavities. Molecular polaritons are formed when the molecular degrees of freedom couple strongly with the modes of a quantum field. From a theoretical point of view the experiments are highly complex, with many different interactions taking place, and a detailed theoretical understanding of the observations is still uncertain. The mission of QuantumLight is to explore, using advanced theoretical modeling, the phenomena that arise when quantum fields interact with molecules and the possibilities that emerge for chemistry. Detailed theoretical and computational understanding of these phenomena will open completely new ways to control and manipulate molecular systems and study new states of matter. The theoretical foundation is cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED), and it will, when combined with the methodologies of quantum chemistry, enable a predictive computational framework for interpretation and future design of polaritonic chemistry. The QuantumLight project will develop and apply accurate electronic structure methods for molecules interacting with quantum fields, in particular coupled cluster theory. Different types of quantum fields will be studied, focusing on those that appear inside optical cavities and the surface plasmon polariton field that is formed by metallic nanoparticles and nanogaps. Applications of the methodology will include ultrafast dynamics in photochemistry, molecules in chiral cavities, electron-photon dynamics, X-ray spectroscopy in cavities, and polariton-assisted chemical reactions.

Mots-clés : molecular polaritons,coupled cluster theory,strong coupling,quantum cavities,quantum plasmonics,polaritonic chemistry,nonadiabatic dynamics,photochemistry,chiral cavities
Projet ERC : GWT (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Imperial College London — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999995.0 €

The classification of Fano manifolds is a long-standing and important open problem. Fano manifolds are basic building blocks in geometry: they are `atomic pieces' of mathematical shapes. We will take a radically new approach to Fano classification, combining Mirror Symmetry (a circle of ideas which originated in string theory) with new methods in geometry and massively-parallel computational algebra. Our main geometric tool will be Gromov-Witten invariants. The Gromov-Witten invariants of a space X record the number of curves in X of a given genus and degree which meet a given collection of cycles in X; they have important applications in algebraic geometry, symplectic topology, and theoretical physics. We will develop powerful new methods for computing Gromov-Witten invariants, and will apply these methods to Fano classification and to questions in birational geometry.

Mots-clés : mirror symmetry,gromov witten invariants,fano manifolds,birational geometry,computational algebra