Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : DRIMMS (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Fundació Clínic per a la Recerca Biomèdica — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : CO-PI
Acronyme de l'entité : FCRB
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3141849.0 €

Successful defence against invaders is critical for survival of eukaryotic cells. Microbes have developed many strategies to subvert host organisms which, in turn, evolved several innate immune responses to counterattack. As major lipid storage organelles of eukaryotes, lipid droplets (LDs) are an attractive source of nutrients for invaders. Pathogens induce and physically interact with LDs and the current view is that they ‘hijack’ LDs to draw on substrates for host colonisation. We recently challenged this dogma by demonstrating that LDs are endowed with a regulated protein-mediated antibiotic activity. Our work intro-duced the new concept that dependence on host nutrients is a generic ‘Achilles’ heel’ of intracellular pathogens and LDs a chokepoint harnessed by innate immunity to organise a front-line defence.  Here, we have formed a multidisciplinary group combining complementary knowledge and transdiscipli-nary expertise to investigate the hypothesis that LDs are innate immunity hubs sensing infection and di-rectly confronting invaders. We will characterise, in cells and animals, how LDs efficiently coordinate and precisely execute a plethora of immune responses such as killing, signalling and inflammation. High-throughput proteomics and lipidomics will identify defensive players. 3D electron tomography and confo-cal microscopy will be combined with proximity labelling strategies and biochemical methods to get un-precedented understanding of host LD-pathogen dynamics. The successful pathogen Mycobacterium tuber-culosis will be used to test the medical significance of our findings and unravel bacterial mechanisms of resistance to LD-mediated defences.  Characterisation of these novel innate immune systems will be paradigm-shifting in immunology, physiol-ogy and cell biology. In the age of antimicrobial resistance and viral pandemics, unravelling how eukaryot-ic LDs fight and defeat dangerous microorganisms will inspire new anti-infective therapies.

Mots-clés : lipid droplets,bacteria,tuberculosis,lipids,mitochondria,cell biology,electron microscopy,proteomics
Projet ERC : NEMESIS (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Fundació Clínic per a la Recerca Biomèdica — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : FCRB
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2826995.0 €

Focal brain disorders, including stroke, trauma, and epilepsy, are the main causes of disability and loss of productivity in the world, and carry a cumulative cost in Europe of about 500 billion euro/year. Now, physicians diagnose and treat these conditions as if they were caused by local dysfunction due to the pathological process. However, there is growing evidence that, in most neurological and psychiatric disorders, clinical symptoms reflect widespread network abnormalities. Normalization of such network abnormalities through “circuit-based” stimulation would therefore improve function. However, this form of therapy is currently limited by numerous factors: lack of knowledge about the underlying mechanisms and their behavioural relevance; inability to map these abnormalities onto single patients; and, most importantly, a principled understanding of where and how to stimulate the brain to produce functional recovery. ‘NEMESIS’, from Ancient Greek as “give what is due”, aims to “give an injured brain what is missing”, i.e., restore through stimulation normal activity in dysfunctional brain circuitries. By synergizing people, concepts, and technologies, NEMESIS will first characterize the effects of focal injury at multiple spatial and temporal scales (from whole brain to local circuits). Through the combination of observational (e.g., fMRI, EEG, calcium imaging, LFPs) and causal methods (e.g., electro-magnetic stimulation, optogenetics) NEMESIS will test the hypothesis that disconnected networks lie in a “sleep-like state” that impairs communication. Thirdly, NEMESIS will create whole brain models of structure/function to predict the effect of individual lesions and simulate novel stimulation protocols aimed at “re-awakening” the disconnected brain. Finally, proof-of-concept interventions that combine circuit-based stimulation and behavioural training, guided by modelling and animal studies, will be tested to restore normal activity, and so give back what is due.

Mots-clés : focal injury,brain networks,brain rhythms,sleep,slow wave oscillations,whole brain computational models,brain stimulation,brain connectivity,fmri,eeg,lfp,calcium imaging,tms,7t mri
Projet ERC : Intellexus (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université d'Hambourg — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : CO-PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 6908431.0 €

A major legacy of the Indic and Tibetic great civilisations is the enormous corpora of preserved texts and the plethora of profound ideas transmitted therein. Intellexus focuses on three vast corpora of Buddhist texts: Indic works in Sanskrit, Indic works in Tibetan translation, and autochthonous Tibetic works with claimed Indic origin. Our hypothesis is that the Indic and Tibetic Buddhist intellectual cultures and their elements—including texts, ideas, and intellectual ecosystems (and their constituents)—arose and developed in dependence. Bringing to light the details of this dependent arising is essential for understanding the rich philosophical, religious, and literary traditions of these cultures and the subtle processes of transfer from the Indic to the Tibetic cultural sphere. These complex processes, we claim, involved interactions not only with other Buddhist elements, but also with non-Buddhist ones. The unique synergy within a broad team of scholars of Humanities and Computer Science makes it possible for the first time to develop methods and tools with which our hypothesis can be tested. We will map the three corpora, taking also Indic and Tibetic non-Buddhist material into consideration, with a focus on three aspects: (a) the geology (composition history) of texts and text corpora; (b) the genealogy of selected concepts; and (c) the intellectual ecosystems involved. The project will also devise sophisticated visualisations of the nexuses of interactions between texts, ideas, and people, which will uncover patterns of intertextuality and intersecting pathways of ideas, and will enable the profiling of the intellectual ecosystems. Our groundbreaking methodology and tools will revolutionise the way we think about and investigate these―and with some adaptations also other―intellectual cultures and the processes leading to the development of their rich traditions. We thus expect a major impact on our fields and beyond.

Mots-clés : intellectual ecosystems evolution of intellectual cultures cultural transfer buddhism india tibet
Projet ERC : Horsepower (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : British Museum — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : BM
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 0.0 €

Horse Power will examine the complex interactions between the eastern steppe and China from the second millennium BCE to the formation of the Xiongnu empire in Mongolia and the Qin state in China after 300 BCE. From the second millennium BCE two great worlds formed, traded and fought across Eurasia. From Mongolia to the European steppe great horse and herding cultures coalesced across thousands of kilometres of grassland. To the south, a string of states existed from Egypt to the Chinese Central Plains, some already ancient and others newly created. Interaction between these worlds was constant and profoundly formative for all parties, a fact we are only starting to fully appreciate. To examine the connections between the steppe, Mongolia and China’s Central Plains we will combine the latest scientific techniques in genetics and metallurgical analysis with theory concerning politics and power within and between China and its northern neighbours. Three principal empirical elements underpin the project: ancient DNA from horses; the characterization of bronzes to throw light on their movement and recycling; the structure and contents of archaeological sites (mainly graves) in China, Mongolia and the steppe. We will develop theory on the nature of leadership and power, particularly in mobile societies. Science will meet social science in a mutually informative manner and we will work across linguistic boundaries (Chinese, Mongolian, Russian, English) in a spirit of the co-production of knowledge with important partners including The Emperor Qin Shihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum in China and Mongolian universities. We will reflect on our working practices, engaging a broader public in how a complex research project works. An innovative artistic programme will engage a range of local communities, horse enthusiasts and local artists in the work and results of the project. Working together we will create a picture of this complex region impossible if we had worked alone.

Mots-clés : cosmology,horse genetics
Projet ERC : Synergy-Plague (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université d'Oslo — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : CO-PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UiO
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3214389.0 €

Synergy-Plague is a multi-disciplinary project to bring our knowledge and understanding of plague, past and present, to new heights. Focussing on the environmental, biological, and societal aspects of plague outbreaks in Eurasia between circa 1300 and 1900 CE, it will address four main questions: (1) Why/how did plague re-emerge in 14th century Central Asia? (2) Why/how did plague re-occur and spread in Eurasia after the Black Death? (3) Why/how did clinical and demographic patterns of plague infection differ across space and time? (4) Why/how did plague disappear from Europe and the Middle East in the 18th and 19th centuries? Our project is based on the hypothesis that plague waves and clinical differences resulted from unique alignments of multiple events: environmental (climatic and soil-chemical), biological (from individual to ecosystem) and societal (demographic, socio-economic and political). Four PIs from the natural sciences and humanities, together with their team members, will jointly study how plague re-emerged in 14th century Central Asia and radiated repeatedly from Eurasian wildlife reservoirs in the following centuries, only to disappear in the 18th-19th centuries. We will develop and analyse new dendrochronological and (paleo-)soil data, textual documentary evidence, and epidemiological models. To understand how plague reached and spread in human populations, paleo-environmental and historical data together with relevant experimental work will be combined with statistical and mathematical modelling. To appreciate why clinical signs and mortality rates varied in space and time, historical evidence will be examined together with new entomological data and ancient DNA (aDNA) of historical plague strains (from humans and anthropophilic rodents). Synergy-Plague will revolutionise our understanding of plague and contribute to our ongoing struggle with epidemic diseases, present and future.

Mots-clés : black death,plague pandemics,rodent burrow systems,human and rodent ectoparasites,plague reservoirs,soil properties,past cimate,epidemiology,statistical and mathematical modeling,experimental work
Projet ERC : BIOSFER (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Institut norvégien de santé publique — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : FHI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 5775751.0 €

High-income countries are experiencing both unprecedentedly low and increasingly polarized fertility with growing social gradients in childbearing. Key theories on fertility patterns are based on the empirical observation that until recently fertility remained comparatively high in gender-egalitarian countries with strong support for families. Since 2010 many of the countries that provided evidence for such theories have reached record-low fertility. This confronts the scientific paradigm of the key drivers of fertility.  BIOSFER investigates how social, biological and psychological factors work together to produce the observed patterns, levels and variation in fertility among young adults, and to what extent the fertility decline and the related polarization can be attributed to social vs. biomedical factors. Our multi-theory approach leverages ideas from several disciplines and proposes that the existing theories must be complemented with concepts of risk aversion and information, intergenerational transmission of fecundity, epigenetics and beyond, in order to understand modern fertility behaviour. We develop theoretically informed, falsifiable hypotheses that we test against the two richest population-based longitudinal pregnancy and pubertal cohorts in the world, MoBa in Norway and the DNBC in Denmark.  We offer a uniquely integrative life-course-based approach that is neither social or biomedical, but combines central ideas from both, and evaluates the biosocial determinants of the key transition points from fetal life through puberty and partnering into planned, unplanned, partnered and unpartnered childbearing. We study the social, biomedical and psychological forces, their interactions, and intergenerational forces as they operate throughout the life-course to produce the modern low-fertility landscape. The results will help to provide a novel, bio-social framework for understanding the life-course processes that drive contemporary fertility patterns.

Mots-clés : reproductive health,fecundity
Projet ERC : DEMI (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Forschungszentrum Jülich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : FZJ
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2479135.0 €

It is our aim to transform the research field of electrocatalysis from the established “initial (as-synthesized) state approach” to a data-centric understanding of the metastable active interface of electrocatalysts, constantly evolving under reaction conditions. We want to overcome the limitations of elemental or binary alloy catalysts by exploring and exploiting high entropy materials (HEM) as a discovery platform for sustainable materials, with the aim to identify in the extremely large, multidimensional search space new electrocatalysts that are both stable and active. To understand and control the active interface of HEM electrocatalysts, we combine the core expertises of the PIs: theoretical modelling and simulations, high-throughput synthesis and characterization, nanoparticle synthesis, electrochemical operando techniques as well as machine learning. Our synergistic approach will significantly advance these individual competences by key conceptual innovations: (i) Evolutionary screening of micro-libraries to efficiently identify stable materials covering the complete HEM composition space; (ii) Accelerated atomic-scale characterization of HEM surfaces by combining combinatorial HEM synthesis with atom probe tomography; (iii) High-throughput operando experiments with thin film material libraries; (iv) Developing inverse activity-structure relationships and theoretical descriptors for metastability; v) Implementing active learning approaches based on materials informatics and using a semantic data lake. We will establish a theory of metastability as a core concept for the understanding of electrocatalysis for the most important energy conversion reactions: oxygen reduction and evolution, and CO2 reduction. Instead of passively accepting the degradation of catalysts during operation, we will direct the evolution through the highly multidimensional space towards long-lasting, active HEM interfaces.

Mots-clés : electrocatalysis,high entropy alloy catalysis,materials discovery,stability degradation
Projet ERC : MOSAIC (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université catholique de Louvain — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : CO-PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCL
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2199250.0 €

“Mapping Occult Sciences Across Islamicate Cultures” (MOSAIC) is the first major project to investigate Islamic and Eastern Christian occult-scientific sources, spanning from late antiquity to the nineteenth century and from Iberia to India, in a vast continuum of languages (Greek, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Turkish). It is generally acknowledged that occult sciences—alchemy, astrology, geomancy, lettrism, magic and a wide range of other operative and prognosticative disciplines—are integral to any history of science and technology. By including the far larger non-Latinate occult-scientific archive, equally integral to this history, MOSAIC is poised to bring about a paradigm shift. We untangle the term “occult” in all its diversity and test a more expansive definition to account for the specific epistemologies driving its multifarious applications. This dynamic and adaptive heuristic not only opens new avenues in the study of body-mind, nature-culture relationships in the historical construction of natural and mathematical science; it also reveals new paths of dissemination and crosspollination of the occult sciences in Islam and Byzantium, restoring a vast textual and artifactual record largely neglected to date. Retrieving occult science will require an unprecedented degree of synergetic expertise, international collaboration and the training of a new generation of highly qualified scholars. We will (1) identify, investigate, catalogue and interpret a critical mass of highly technical sources, making them available through editions, translations, surveys, studies, exhibitions and conferences; (2) combine, as feasible, the study of scientific theories with their technological practice, including through experimental reconstruction; (3) develop a suite of open-access digital tools of immediate use to specialists and nonspecialists alike, and (4) integrate all our findings in a print and born-digital Master Synthesis as an engine for the field going forward.

Mots-clés : greek,syriac,arabic,persian,turkish,artifacts,manusripts,byzantium,islam,occult sciences,encyclopedism,experimental reconstruction,knowledge organisation,critical editions,digital tools
Projet ERC : CartoHostBug (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : KTH Institut royal de technologie — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2972746.25 €

Microbiome-host crosstalk is crucial for gut homeostasis and its dysregulation is a hallmark of diseases such as colorectal cancer (CRC) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Despite its key relevance for a holistic understanding of the human superorganism and its (patho-)physiology, how local host-microbiome interactions form specific niches in the gut and how these niches function at the cellular and molecular level remains unexplored, mainly due to a lack of suitable technologies. To fill this gap, we propose to jointly reconstruct the host transcriptional and microbiome compositional landscape of the human gut across a large number of healthy individuals as well as IBD and CRC patients. For this, we will leverage a combination of novel spatial profiling technologies for unbiased transcriptome sequencing and microbiome profiling at single-cell resolution in situ. First, we will spatially delineate local niches formed of specific microbes and host cells. To dissect this complex crosstalk into specific interactions, we will secondly use in vitro and in vivo models to introduce perturbations either on the host or the microbiome side. Finally, we will integrate the resulting data to deconvolute host-microbiome circuits computationally and to predict functional niches, in particular host responses to pathogens of relevance in IBD and CRC. Interesting predictions will be tested in organoid and animal models. Developing a spatially resolved computational model of the gut ecosystem will allow us to predict early local events in disease onset; from these we will identify and validate prognostic IBD and CRC biomarkers for future clinical translation.  This work will revolutionize our understanding of intestinal host-microbiome interactions by adding a first-ever functionally resolved spatial dimension with clinical relevance for the future diagnosis and treatment of intestinal disorders.

Mots-clés : spatial transcriptomics spatial microbiome analysis host microbiome interactions mucosal immunology intestinal diseases colorectal cancer gut
Projet ERC : CODICUM (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Synergy grants)
Entité participante : Université du Danemark du Sud — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : SDU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 4207677.5 €

Medieval books were instrumental in shaping European history, communicating rituals, stories and ideas as they were read, copied and shared. To modern scholars they illuminate trade, craft, religious, social and intellectual networks. Less than 10% of the European corpus survives, and in Scandinavia the situation is far worse. However, by historical accident a very high number of Latin fragments – c. 50.000 – from these precious books have been preserved. CODICUM will study and analyse the Nordic book fragments as sources to medieval book culture and its networks. While parchment fragments are found throughout Europe, the numbers and the randomness of their survival in the Nordic countries lend them a special significance. The time is now ripe for interrogating this promising material as one unique European archive by combining approaches from the humanities and the sciences. How was Scandinavia included in different intellectual networks and how did these networks evolve and overlap? How was book production adapted to the limited resources of the north? What can this cross-national archive teach us about curating textual heritage in the long term? CODICUM is led by PIs from four different fields – palaeography, literature, history, and bio-codicology. This unique blending of research expertise enables an innovative synergy which will expand the perspective of European book history c. 1000-1500, reconnect fragments to each other and digitally ‘reassemble’ medieval books, explore the craftsmanship associated with book production, reveal the relationships between the transmitted manuscripts material and illuminate the international networks linking Northern Europe. Researching medieval book culture on an unprecedented scale, CODICUM will seek to resituate our understanding of the book in shaping the Nordic region and connecting the region to the rest of Europe thereby pushing the poorly known Nordic fragment archive into the fore of European book-historical research.

Mots-clés : parchment,bio codicology,ecclesiastical history,monastic history,crafts,scandinavia