Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : PARTNERS (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : Central European University — Pays : Hongrie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CEU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1498686.98 €

In order to navigate the social world, children must understand how social interactions unfold in their society. While many recent studies have investigated how children evaluate the roles that people play in everyday interactions and what inferences they draw from their observations, to date there is no unifying account for the conceptual repertoire and computational mechanisms used by infants to analyse their social environment. Taking a new theoretical perspective on this topic, we plan to study whether and how human infants and young children are able to infer the social relations that underlie observed interactions. The theoretical background of this approach is based on the combination of two proposals: (1) that actions are analysed in terms of the costs and benefits they produce to the actors and others affected, and (2) Alan Fiske’s theory, according to which human social relations could be classified into basic elementary forms. Using a variety of behavioural and neuroimaging techniques, we intend to investigate whether children infer the specific social relation that the intentional structure and the cost-benefit outcome of an observed interaction could reveal. More specifically, while resource transfer events (e.g., giving, taking) alter the distribution of goods among participants, they may also cue certain types of underlying relations that would ensure that all parties benefit, directly or indirectly, from the exchange on the long run (e.g., by reciprocity). We aim to establish whether drawing inferences to social relations enjoys the priority in the infant mind over attribution of social dispositions, whether infants predict the outcome of new, previously unobserved interactions, what information children use to choose partners for cooperative tasks, and how they track individuals across social contexts. This research will also provide a new perspective on the development of moral psychology by extending its domain from actions to social interactions.
Projet ERC : ReduceSearch (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : Eindhoven University of Technology — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TU/e
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1473020.0 €

In our world of big data and theoretically intractable problems, automated preprocessing to simplify problem formulations before solving them algorithmically is growing ever more important. Suitable preprocessing has the potential to reduce computation times from days to seconds. In the last 15 years, a framework for rigorously studying the power and limitations of efficient preprocessing has been developed. The resulting theory of kernelization is full of deep theorems, but it has overshot its goal: it does not explain the empirical success of preprocessing algorithms, and most questions it poses do not lead to the identification of preprocessing techniques that are useful in practice. This crucial flaw stems from the fact that the theoretical kernelization framework does not address the main experimentally observed cause of algorithmic speed-ups: a reduction in the search space of the subsequently applied problem-solving algorithm. REDUCESEARCH will re-shape the theory of effective preprocessing with a focus on search-space reduction. The goal is to develop a toolkit of algorithmic preprocessing techniques that reduce the search space, along with rigorous mathematical guarantees on the amount of search-space reduction that is achieved in terms of quantifiable properties of the input. The three main algorithmic strategies are: (1) reducing the size of the solution that the solver has to find, by already identifying parts of the solution during the preprocessing phase; (2) splitting the search space into parts with limited interaction, which can be solved independently; and (3) identifying redundant constraints and variables in a problem formulation, which can be eliminated without changing the answer. This will raise the scientific study of preprocessing to the next level. Since physical limits form a barrier to further speeding up computer hardware, future advances in computing power rely on algorithmic breakthroughs as envisioned here.

Mots-clés : acm ccs theory of computation parameterized complexity and exact algorithms  theory of computation graph algorithms analysis  theory of computation algorithm design techniques
Projet ERC : MigrantLife (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Social World and Its Diversity
Entité participante : Stockholm University — Pays : Suède — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 81628.75 €

In recent decades, European countries have witnessed increasing immigration streams and ethnic heterogeneity of their populations. Facilitating immigrant integration and social cohesion has become a major societal issue. The project moves beyond previous research by first investigating how employment, housing and family trajectories evolve and interact in the lives of descendants of post-WWII immigrants and post-1990 immigrants in the UK, France, Germany and Sweden, and how factors related to a societal context, an early life context and critical transitions shape their life histories. Second, the study will project their future life trajectories using innovative simulation techniques, considering the main life domains and diversity between and within immigrant groups. Although recent studies report substantial diversity in employment, in housing and in family patterns among descendants of post-war immigrants and recent immigrants in Europe, the causes of this heterogeneity remain far from clear. Furthermore, it is not known whether observed differences between immigrants and natives are short-term outcomes in a long-term process of cultural and economic integration or rather reflections of different pathways and outcomes for immigrants and their descendants. The project will exploit large-scale longitudinal data from four countries and apply advanced longitudinal methods, including multichannel sequence analysis and multilevel event history analysis. Microsimulation will be applied to project life histories for immigrants and their descendants. The project will significantly deepen our understanding of the relationships between the three life domains, and the causes of less and more successful life trajectories among immigrants and their descendants. This project will show whether the current heterogeneity between and within immigrant and minority groups vanishes over time or rather persists, suggesting an increasing diversity of European societies.

Mots-clés : immigrants,second generation,employment,family,housing,longitudinal analysis,microsimulation
Projet ERC : PertQCD (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
Entité participante : Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ETH Zurich
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2045095.0 €

In recent months, we broke new ground in perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics computing for the first time a physical cross-section of a hadron collider process - Higgs production - at the fourth order in the strong coupling constant expansion. This breakthrough improved the perturbative precision of a fundamental cross-section by a factor of four, paving the way for a very precise testing of the Standard Model theory against LHC data. The aim of our proposal is to fully automate all calculations which are needed for LHC and future collider physics at similarly high perturbative orders. Our work will improve the precision of theoretical predictions across the spectrum of LHC phenomenology, matching or superseding the accuracy of experimental measurements. In turn, we will be able to draw firm conclusions about the validity of theories which aspire to describe nature at TeV energies and search confidently for signals of new physics through precision measurements at the LHC.
Projet ERC : N4I_CLUSTERS (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Imperial College London — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1334616.0 €

In recent years, economic geography has strongly embraced the relational approach: entrepreneurs striving to generate innovations have been shown to benefit from embeddedness in local, cohesive networks if these are combined with connectivity to sparse, global ties that bring diversity. With this heightened importance of networks for innovation, it is rather surprising that academic research has nearly entirely overlooked the role of “networking”. Networks are portrayed as if they are formed exclusively through latent preferences to connect with certain people or through contextual factors that make people accidently connect. This leaves little space for entrepreneurs’ deliberate attempts to create the social capital they believe will help them innovate. We thus lack the micro-level theoretical foundations of the network-innovation relationship in economic geography. My research aims to build these foundations by developing a network behavioural approach to innovation in entrepreneurial clusters. I seek to investigate how within-cluster variation in entrepreneurs’ innovation performance may originate in differences in network behaviour and how between-cluster variation in performance may originate in the spread of effective network behaviours within but not between clusters. Answers to these questions should lead to fundamentally new insights into why certain clusters thrive as hubs of innovation and why certain entrepreneurs within clusters contribute more to the innovation in clusters than others. I will collect granular qualitative and quantitative data of the network behaviours of entrepreneurs through interviews, multi-wave surveys and online network monitoring tools to unveil how they decide which ties to build and which ones to call on in specific situations. I will then assess how these behaviours enable or constrain entrepreneurs and, in aggregate, clusters to innovate using large-scale econometric analyses as well social science experiments.

Mots-clés : clusters,social networks,entrepreneurship,behaviour
Projet ERC : HumanEuroMed (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : University of Florence — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1968945.0 €

In recent years, international humanitarianism has increasingly attracted the interest of historians. A great deal of research has reconstructed aid programmes for those who are victims of war, natural disaster or economic disadvantage. These studies have mainly examined the experience of donor countries in northern Europe, as well as the United States, while the countries of southern Europe have largely been overlooked. HumanEuroMed challenges this unbalance. It puts the countries of Mediterranean Europe at the centre, and it explores the experience of different actors (institutions, administrators, experts, non-governmental organisations) in a comparative and transnational perspective. This project seeks to reframe the history of international aid in the second half of the 20th century by restoring to view the contributions of Mediterranean Europe to shaping the contemporary humanitarian regime. It will achieve this objective by addressing three thematic axes which are able to capture the specific humanitarian undertakings of the countries under investigation (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece) and make them comparable: 1. the entanglements between international aid, decolonisation and the complex configuration of the post-colonial world; 2. humanitarian diplomacy and the transnational networks (both formal and informal networks, between institutions, non-governmental organisations, professionals and experts) that interconnected the countries of Mediterranean Europe between themselves and to the Global South; 3. the linkages between international relief and national welfare, with a focus on the intertwining of policies, practices and cultures of social care on a national level and those of international relief programmes. HumanEuroMed will contribute to paving the way towards a multifaceted and multi-level history of the contemporary humanitarian regime.

Mots-clés : humanitarianism,mediterranean europe,decolonisation,welfare,humanitarian diplomacy,ngos
Projet ERC : DimorphicCircuits (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Weizmann Institute of Science — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

In sexually reproducing species, males and females respond to environmental sensory cues and transform the input into sexually dimorphic traits. These dimorphisms are the basis for sex-biased phenotypes in many neurological diseases. Yet, complete understanding of the underlying mechanism is still missing. How does the sexual identity impose molecular changes to individual neurons and circuits? What are the sex-specific synaptic changes that occur during development in these circuits? We recently demonstrated a sexually dimorphic dimension of neuronal connectivity: neurons belonging to a shared nervous system rewire in a sex-specific manner to generate sexually dimorphic behaviors. New findings from our lab further reveal a significant difference in the way the two sexes in the nematode C. elegans respond to aversive stimuli. These dimorphic responses are mediated via sex-shared circuits that receive similar environmental input, yet respond differently. Building on our exciting preliminary results, we seek to elucidate how genetic sex modulates neuronal function, neural circuit dynamics and behavior during development. This proposal will pursue three complementary objectives: (i) Map the repertoire of sexually dimorphic avoidance behaviors; (ii) Study the synaptic basis for the development of sexually dimorphic circuits; and (iii) Elucidate the molecular basis of sexually dimorphic neuronal circuits. These mechanisms can only be currently resolved in C. elegans, where the entire connectome of the nervous system for both sexes has been mapped. Using cutting-edge optogenetics, calcium imaging, activity-dependent trans-synaptic labeling, genetic screens and single-cell transcriptome analysis we will shed light on the elusive connection between genes, circuits and behavior. Understanding how genetic sex modulates neuronal circuits will aid in the development of novel gender-specific therapies.

Mots-clés : sex specific connectivity,neuronal circuits,caenorhabditis elegans,dimorphic behaviors,sexual selection,dimorphism,trans synaptic labeling,single cell rna seq,connectome,nociception
Projet ERC : Group-Dynamics-TCB (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Entité participante : University of Cambridge — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : U. Cambridge
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1665444.0 €

In social animals, the characteristics and dynamics of groups affect the development of individuals, the selection pressures operating on them and the demography of populations. Using existing study populations of two social mammals (Kalahari meerkats and Damaraland mole-rats) that offer unique and complementary opportunities for research, we shall (1) explore the effects of variation in group size on growth, behaviour, hormonal status and gene regulation in both species and test suggestions that (i) increasing group size generates divergence in development among group members and the formation of incipient castes and (ii) that breeding extends female longevity rather than reducing it; (2) assess the extent and causes of variation in group longevity and in the frequency with which groups generate new breeding units, model the relative impact of selection operating at different levels on the evolution of cooperation, and investigate whether there is any indication that the behaviour of individuals is adapted to increasing group persistence or proliferation; (3) examine the effects of group size and group dynamics on the dynamics of populations and their responses to variation in rainfall, temperature and epidemic disease (TB), generalise these models to explore the population dynamics of cooperative breeders and explore their consequences for the evolution of cooperative breeding. Our work involves novel approaches to the measurement and analysis of development, communication and gene regulation in wild animals, and to modelling multi-level selection and the dynamics of hierarchically structured populations. It will provide insight into the social mechanisms affecting individual development, multi-level selection and the population dynamics and management of group-living animals.
Projet ERC : INTERDOT (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Ghent University — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UGent
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 145000.0 €

In the ERC project ULPICC, a new type of optical amplifier was invented that is much more compact than existing optical amplifiers based on rare earth doping and much cheaper to fabricate than the ones based on III-V semiconductors. It is based on our discovery that HgTe colloidal quantum dots (QDs) exhibit a gain threshold several orders of magnitude lower than any other type of QDs studied before. Semiconductor QDs are fabricated using wet chemical synthesis procedures and can be deposited with cheap solution-based techniques such as printing which makes them competitive with traditional gain host media, with the additional advantage that the gain peak wavelength of colloidal QDs can be set freely by controlling the size of the QD, making them extremely versatile. An application (considered by big industrial players such as INTEL, IBM, NTT, …) particularly suffering from the lack of a compact optical amplifier is that of optical interconnects (OI) between chips to accommodate increasing data-transfer rates elusive for electronics. The OI market is expected to grow to $1 billion by 2021, where we expect the amplifier function can be valued anywhere up to 10% of the total OI value ! A heavily investigated approach to realize such an OI is that of ‘silicon photonics’, which has been shown to fulfil the requirements in terms of bandwidth and power consumption but lacks a native optical gain medium required to compensate the OI intrinsic losses. Therefore, the objective of INTERDOT is to assess the technical and commercial potential of optical amplifiers based on colloidal HgTe QDs, integrated on silicon photonics chips or in board-level OIs. We will validate their gain, specify their efficiency, initiate reliability and performance testing (through close industrial collaboration) and investigate how the knowhow involved can be protected and commercialized, either through licensing and/or spin-off creation.

Mots-clés : optical amplifier,quantum dots,photonics,optical interconnect
Projet ERC : Damocles (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Inserm
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1498618.0 €

In the European Union, 15 million people have an unruptured intracranial aneurysm (IA) that may rupture one day and lead to subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH). The IA rupture event is ominous and lingers as a clinical quandary. No safe and effective non-invasive therapies have, as of yet, been identified and implemented in clinical practice mainly because of a lack of knowledge of the underlying mechanisms. Increasing evidence points to inflammation as one of the leading factors in the pathogenesis of IA. Intrasaccular clot formation is a common feature of IA occurring unruptured and ruptured IA. In addition to forming clots, activated platelets support leukocyte recruitment. Interestingly, platelets also prevent local hemorrhage in inflammatory situations independently of their ability to form a platelet plug. We hypothesize that the role of platelet may evolve throughout the development of IA: initially playing a protective role of in the maintenance of vascular integrity in response to inflammation and contributing later to intrasaccular thrombus formation. What are the platelet signaling pathways and responses involved and to what extent do they contribute to the disease and the rupture event? To answer these questions, we designed an interdisciplinary proposal, which gathers biophysical, pharmacological, and in-vivo approaches, with the following objectives: I) To investigate platelet functions from patients diagnosed with intracranial aneurysm at the sites of aneurysm sac. II) To delineate platelet mechanisms and responses in a cutting-edge technology of a 3D reconstruction of IA that will take into account the hemodynamic shear stress. III) To test in a preclinical mouse model of IA efficient anti-platelet therapies and define a therapeutic window to intervene on platelet activation. The proposed project will yield new insights in IA disease and in life science, from cell biology to the discovery of potential new targets in cardiovascular medicine.

Mots-clés : intracranial aneurysm,platelets,inflammation,vascular wall integrity