Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : SOCO (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Entité participante : Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Société Max Planck
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499047.0 €

Our brain both shapes and is shaped by social interactions, creating a dynamic link between neural processes and our social environment. Although previous research has identified brain regions involved in social functional processes such as perspective-taking and empathy, and has shown environmentally guided brain plasticity, we still lack a full understanding of the neurobiological basis of social thinking that combines internal brain processes and external social factors. Specifically, we do not fully understand how brain structure and function enable our social abilities while also being influenced by our social surroundings. This knowledge gap limits our understanding of human social behavior and how the brain adapts to changing social demands. This ERC Starting Grant ‘Social Connections’ (SOCO) aims to fill this gap by investigating the connection between social cognition and the social environment. My project uniquely combines precision neuroimaging, describing the microarchitectural basis of social cognition at the highest resolution, with population neuroimaging, tracking lifespan brain trajectories linked to social processes. First, I will map key social functional processes, perspective-taking and empathy, using a naturalistic social task. For this, I will use in vivo ultra-high resolution structural and functional brain scans (7 Tesla MRI) and independent post-mortem histological data to understand how the brain enables social cognition. Second, using publicly available large-scale datasets, I will investigate how genes, based on genome-wide association studies, and social environment, such as caregiving, socioeconomic status, and loneliness, interact to form the structure and function of brain areas involved in social behavior throughout life. By illuminating how internal functional processes and external social factors come together, I will advance our understanding of the neurobiological basis of social cognition with a novel and integrative approach.

Mots-clés : social neuroscience neuroimaging genetics population neuroscience
Projet ERC : Super4Spin (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed Matter Physics
Entité participante : Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Société Max Planck
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Our recent discovery of altermagnets has opened science and technology opportunities unparalleled in the two conventional classes of ferromagnets and antiferromagnets. Moreover, the direct analogy of a d-wave spin-polarization order in altermagnets to the unconventional d-wave superconducting order in cuprates suggests that we now hold a key to a vast uncharted territory of unconventional magnetism. In my project, I will identify unconventional forms of magnetism beyond the d-wave cuprate counterparts, including such prominent examples as magnetic counterparts of s$^\pm$-wave pnictide superconductors or p-wave superfluid He-3. To build a “periodic table” of unconventional even and odd-parity wave magnets, I will develop a generalized symmetry-based methodology, tailored to a variable hierarchy of interactions across this large materials' territory. With the “periodic table” of unconventional magnetism, I will remove fundamental roadblocks in research and applications of relativistic and topological phases based on conventional magnets: the non-conserved spin of relativistic electrons, and the fragility of topological phases with non-dissipative electronic transport. I will demonstrate: (i) Even-parity-wave magnetism with time-reversal-symmetry breaking in the electronic structure accompanied by a vanishing net magnetization, and with conserved spin of relativistic electrons. (ii) Odd-parity-wave magnetism with time-reversal-invariant electronic structure, and with a strong exchange spin-splitting counterpart of the conventional weak relativistic spin splitting. (iii) Robust synergy of unconventional magnetism with topological phases in one common crystal. Armed with (i-iii), I will show the path to spin-conserved and non-dissipative electronic transport at ambient conditions using the unconventional magnets. This can pave the way for future ultra temporally and spatially scalable and energy-efficient spin-based electronics.

Mots-clés : magnetic topological phases,quantum anomalous hall effect,altermagnetism
Projet ERC : LIFETIMES (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Trinity College — Pays : Irlande — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499967.0 €

Population history is built on individual lifetimes. Life traits such as health, mobility and fertility determine demographic trajectories. Demography, in turn, drives environmental, cultural and biological change, altering future life histories. To unravel these complex feedback loops is to learn where our societies and genomes came from, and where we might go next. Central to these endeavours is the reconstruction of local demographic histories from the archaeological record, which can reveal long-term cycles of growth, decline and transformation. These reconstructions can be built from the top-down (charting macro trends in human activity) or bottom-up (characterising bioarchaeological traits). Ancient genomics promises to transform these dual approaches and further build a bridge between the two, but this requires highly focused regional sampling and methodological innovation. LIFETIMES will build this bridge for one of the world’s most highly-resolved archaeological records - that of medieval Ireland. Leveraging almost 5,000 ancient and modern genomes, it will map in unprecedented detail islandwide and subregional patterns of population size, gene flow and adaptation. These macro-histories will be set against the stories of three communities, whose burial grounds remained in use for almost a millennium. Through exhaustive sampling, extensive family trees will emerge, allowing us to view the longue durée of human history at the highest resolution - as a series of interconnected lifetimes. Changes in social organisation, lifespan and health will be interrogated at the level of the genome, methylome and microbiome. Combined with structured interdisciplinary collaboration, this will be the first such synthesis of its kind. It will not only address longstanding issues within insular history (e.g. language origins, disease risk, past pestilence, gender dynamics), but provide fresh insights into the fundamental interactions between genes, culture and the environment.

Mots-clés : ancient genomics palaeodemography,life history migration social organisation health and disease
Projet ERC : GEOFORMATIONS (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
Entité participante : Trinity College — Pays : Irlande — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499745.0 €

Interacting socio-political, economic, and environmental crises are destabilizing efforts to attain the global vision entailed in UN Agenda 2030. The need for adaptive and inclusive development cooperation governance has never been stronger. As complex needs accelerate due to the coronavirus pandemic, rapidly changing climates, and increasing levels of conflict and human insecurity, trust and legitimacy in traditional institutions and actors is weak and declining. In efforts to achieve greater development effectiveness, the international development cooperation sector is shifting towards new ways of working, including increased localization, decolonization, greater coherence across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, and adapting development practice to support deeper engagement with civil society actors. However, how these changes affect governance structures and processes within non-profit non-governmental and civil society organizations (CSOs) is not well understood. With an estimated 37,000 autonomous entities, understanding how, why, and in what ways CSOs assemble governance structures and interact to ensure effective and appropriate governance of development programs is critically important to trust and legitimacy in this sector. To date, no research has systematically examined the relational and spatial dynamics of CSO governance chains. Nor have comprehensive evaluation frameworks for such assemblages yet been developed. Using core geographical concepts of place, space, and scale, drawing upon ground-breaking methodologies of assemblage thinking and critical realist evaluation, combined with innovations in organizational theory through issue framing, GEOFORMATIONS will provide radical new insights into the governance geographies of place-based development cooperation practices which can be used to radically redesign international development cooperation governance theory, policy, and practice.

Mots-clés : international development cooperation,civil society organizations,assemblage thinking,critical realism,development governance
Projet ERC : TEASEr (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and R egeneration
Entité participante : Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Société Max Planck
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500328.0 €

The formation of a functional embryo is dictated by precise genetic and morphogenetic events. Yet, focusing solely on gene expression does not seem sufficient to explain all developmental phenotypes. Mobile genetic elements (or transposable elements, TEs) have been little studied in the context of cellular differentiation and organogenesis. I propose that TEs contribute to embryo formation, both in physiological and pathological contexts. Nearly all eukaryotic genomes contain TEs, which account for roughly half of the mammalian genome. TEs are involved in early pre-implantation development as well as pathologies such as cancer and aging, but their role in the post-implantation embryo is unclear. This is in part due to technical challenges that can now be overcome with advances in genome engineering and long-read sequencing. I recently described that the aberrant expression of a TE during mouse limb development leads to the production of toxic viral-like particles (VLPs), causing a pathological phenotype. Mechanistically, this involves the TE using local gene regulation for its own transcription in specific developmental cells. These findings provoke emerging concepts on how TEs can disrupt or participate in embryo formation which will be addressed in this proposal through the generation of tailored stem cell and in vivo mouse models targeting specific TEs, combined with high-throughput sequencing and microscopy. First, I will investigate the pathogenic threat of TE insertion in mouse embryos during organogenesis. Second, the silencing and activation of TEs during lineage commitment will be addressed in stem-cell-based embryo models. Finally, I will explore the role of TEs in tissue shaping during developmental senescence. This will provide novel insight into unexplored areas of genomic regulation during embryo development. Thereby, TEASEr will introduce TEs as an important player in genetic unsolved congenital malformation and physiological embryogenesis.

Mots-clés : transposable elements,development,mouse embryogenesis,genomics
Projet ERC : CoBeEn (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: B iological  Mechanisms , Structures  and Functions
Entité participante : Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Société Max Planck
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1393703.0 €

There are two approaches to the emergence of life: bottom up and top down. This means on one hand, we can start with simple geochemical reactions and try to synthesize increasingly complex molecules and reaction networks from there. On the other hand, we can start with life as we know it and try to decomplicate the chemical reactions that run it to find a common denominator. Both approaches have yielded important insights, but they also have their limitations. So far, the two approaches are far away from ultimately converging. CoBeEN aims to reconcile geochemistry and biochemistry by focussing on the most ancient carbon fixation route: the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway (WLP). This autotrophic pathway uses the electrons of hydrogen to fix CO2, a reaction that also occurs abiotically – using minerals as catalysts instead of enzymes. The mere transition from minerals to enzymes seems far-fetched, given the leap in complexity required. However, organic cofactors or coenzymes, simpler organic molecules assisting enzymatic reactions by being truly recyclable reaction partners, are hypothesized to have preceded enzymes. They are pivotal in theoretical reconstructions of autocatalytic, non-enzymatic networks describing a minimal metabolism based on carbon fixation. CoBeEn postulates that coenzymes played a central role in enabling the transition from mineral-based CO2 fixation to enzymatic carbon metabolism. CoBeEn will experimentally link key metabolic cofactors of the WLP to mineral-assisted catalysis. The goal is to understand the transition from environmental reactions to metabolic functions by elucidating how metabolic pathways and the molecules employed by them were selected by the environment. By mapping the understudied interactions between chemically active environments and metabolism, we will gain insights into their mechanistic interdependencies before they were separated by the origin of cellular organization.

Mots-clés : emergence of metabolism,luca,coenzymes,mineral catalysis
Projet ERC : FIRST-GIANTS (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe Sciences
Entité participante : Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Société Max Planck
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1498750.0 €

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed that galaxies in the first billion years of the Universe are maturing surprisingly fast. Massive galaxies outnumber predictions, appear to have high stellar mass densities, host massive black holes and in some cases disky morphologies. Understanding this rapid assembly is crucial: the abundance of early massive galaxies would pose a major challenge for current galaxy formation models in the ΛCDM framework. However, these results remain contentious, as they are primarily based on broad-band photometric samples, interpreted with stellar population models that were calibrated in the local Universe. The masses, nature and space density of the candidate massive galaxies therefore are highly uncertain. To determine how galaxies could grow so rapidly requires a comprehensive approach: high-quality spectra for a large set of candidate massive galaxies, combined with novel modelling to obtain dynamical masses, robust stellar masses and star formation histories, and to identify active galactic nuclei (AGN). As PI of a large ongoing spectroscopic JWST program, I have obtained the first spectra that reveal early massive galaxies in unprecedented detail, along with a broader ‘context sample’ of several thousand galaxies. I have developed the necessary kinematic modelling tools to get dynamical masses of early galaxies, and have tailored stellar population models in place. We will robustly constrain the abundance of massive galaxies in the first billion years, their masses, structures and star formation histories, and AGN duty cycle. We will embed these results in the context of cosmological galaxy formation models. We can then determine how galaxy assembly took place in dark matter haloes, constrain the star formation efficiency, and answer how star formation was regulated in early galaxies. This proposal presents a breakthrough in our understanding of the first billion years, setting a new benchmark for galaxy formation models.

Mots-clés : high redshift galaxies galaxy formation galaxy dynamics galaxy stellar populations
Projet ERC : LoopSMC (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: B iological  Mechanisms , Structures  and Functions
Entité participante : Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Société Max Planck
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Life and evolution of organisms relies on the maintenance, integration, propagation, and readout of genetic information. This information is stored in chromosomes that have a specific three-dimensional structure, a condensed yet accessible form of DNA that is dynamically folded during the lifespan of cells. How DNA is folded within chromosomes has however remained a mystery. It has been proposed that this is achieved by a process of loop extrusion in which SMC (Structural Maintenance of Chromosomes) complexes that are multi-subunit ATPases present in all kingdoms of life – including condensin and cohesin – reel DNA into loops, thereby organizing genomic DNA into higher-order structures. Recent in vitro single-molecule studies, stimulated by our initial discovery on condensin, provided direct evidences that both condensin and cohesin can indeed generate chromatin loops by extrusion. However, the most fundamental questions relating to this process remain unanswered: What is the molecular mechanism of loop extrusion? How is this process regulated? What are the functional roles of SMC-mediated loop extrusion beyond condensation? To address these questions, we will synergistically combine our single-molecule loop extrusion assay with correlative light and electron tomography and force spectroscopy to reveal both dynamic and structural aspects of loop extrusion and SMC proteins. Specifically, we will resolve how SMC complexes function as molecular ‘motors’, how regulatory factors modulate the kinetics of loop extrusion, and how loop extrusion impacts cellular functions like chromosome segregation and gene recombination, all at the single molecule level. In the long term, our findings will provide vital insights into the basic packaging structure of the genome which directly governs its biological function.

Mots-clés : genome organization,single molecule biophysics,dna protein interactions
Projet ERC : LUMIBOR (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Société Max Planck
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1457385.0 €

With a steadily growing, aging population, there is significant strain on the pharmaceutical sector to produce state of the art therapeutics for societal needs whilst respecting the finite resources provided by the environment. Prominent advances in drug design are reliant on chemical synthesis platforms allowing the efficient exploration of chemical space to discover next generation functional molecules. As a result, innovation is currently limited by the practical implementation of enabling methods, which often becomes the rate limiting factor in cutting-edge research: this is more pronounced when translating academic research to industrial settings. The current renaissance of organic photochemistry and light-driven processes in a broader sense provide an opportunity to reconcile the growing demand for new functional molecules with consideration of sustainability and atom economy. Inspired by the importance of organoboron motifs in medicinal chemistry, this EU action “LUMIBOR” will harness the untapped potential of boron hybridization and boron ligand design to unlock new excited state reactivity paradigms and thereby facilitate the discovery of new methods to access achiral and chiral 3D organoboron scaffolds. LUMIBOR will create a structural platform to utilize boron hybridization in the development of next generation light-enabled ACTIVATION methods. Understanding the correlation between hybridization and parameters such as excited state energy and adjacent bond dissociation energy will allow access to synthetically versatile, high-energy intermediates such as α-boryl radicals and the triplet excited state. Strategic control over boron hybridization will also be utilized to regulate REACTIVITY, by influencing radical philicty, spin density, and excited state lifetimes among other parameters. Collectively, LUMIBOR will create expansive guidelines to expand the synthesis arsenal by developing novel platforms to construct desirable 3D organoboron molecules.

Mots-clés : boron,photochemistry,medicinal chemistry,
Projet ERC : KinestheticDisplays (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
Entité participante : Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Société Max Planck
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1492798.0 €

Kinesthesia – awareness of position and movement of body parts – is essential in all aspects of life. Kinesthesia enables mundane activities such as typing or lifting a glass to our lips, as well as feats like playing a piano concert or competing in an elite sport. It not only provides information about our body, but also helps form an embodied understanding of the world around us. Although kinesthesia is central to human experience, it is barely used in human-computer interaction (HCI). However, existing methods like visual retargeting or auditory body illusions suggest that such displays are possible. Vibration, exemplified by the Pinocchio Illusion, might be an ideal actuation method to convey kinesthetic information; however, the literature shows no systematic way to achieve this.  I aim to design kinesthetic displays (KDs), general purpose devices that provide an embodied experience of movement. I will apply a sensorimotor perspective to the design of vibrotactile feedback, building on my know-how of using sensorimotor contingencies for designing vibrotactile material experiences. In this project my team and I will design a series of prototype KDs which will be used to study how design decisions, stimulation parameters, and algorithms influence the introspective experience of movement. The resulting data will be used to formulate design guidelines for KDs and to establish an empirical theory of sensorimotor interaction.  KDs will transform remote and co-located training and skill sharing. KDs will help us better understand our own bodies and provide amputees with sensory access to prosthetic limbs or other body augmentations. Finally, KDs will provide digital systems with an embodied channel of communication, revolutionizing how we interact with computers.

Mots-clés : haptics,embodied interaction,kinesthetic experiences,body based user interfaces