Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : AUTOMATION (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
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 : 1295890.0 €

Since the invention of the spinning frame, automation has been one of the drivers of economic growth. Yet, workers, economist or the general public have been concerned that automation may destroy jobs or create inequality. This concern is particularly prevalent today with the sustained rise in economic inequality and fast technological progress in IT, robotics or self-driving cars. The empirical literature has showed the impact of automation on income distribution. Yet, the level of wages itself should also affect the incentives to undertake automation innovations. Understanding this feedback is key to assess the long-term effect of policies. My project aims to provide the first quantitative account of the two-way relationship between automation and the income distribution. It is articulated around three parts. First, I will use patent data to study empirically the causal effect of wages on automation innovations. To do so, I will build firm-level variation in the wages of the customers of innovating firms by exploiting variations in firms’ exposure to international markets. Second, I will study empirically the causal effect of automation innovations on wages. There, I will focus on local labour market and use the patent data to build exogenous variations in local knowledge. Third, I will calibrate an endogenous growth model with firm dynamics and automation using Danish firm-level data. The model will replicate stylized facts on the labour share distribution across firms. It will be used to compute the contribution of automation to economic growth or the decline of the labour share. Moreover, as a whole, the project will use two different methods (regression analysis and calibrated model) and two different types of data, to answer questions of crucial policy importance such as: Taking into account the response of automation, what are the long-term effects on wages of an increase in the minimum wage, a reduction in labour costs, or a robot tax?

Mots-clés : automation,inequality,income distribution,factor share,skill premium,directed technical change,patent,firm dynamics,minimum wage
Projet ERC : ANYONIC (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed matter physics
Entité participante : Weizmann Institute of Science — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1801094.0 €

Since their discovery, Quantum Hall Effects have unfolded intriguing avenues of research, exhibiting a multitude of unexpected exotic states: accurate quantized conductance states; particle-like and hole-conjugate fractional states; counter-propagating charge and neutral edge modes; and fractionally charged quasiparticles - abelian and (predicted) non-abelian. Since the sought-after anyonic statistics of fractional states is yet to be verified, I propose to launch a thorough search for it employing new means. I believe that our studies will serve the expanding field of the emerging family of topological materials. Our on-going attempts to observe quasiparticles (qp’s) interference, in order to uncover their exchange statistics (under ERC), taught us that spontaneous, non-topological, ‘neutral edge modes’ are the main culprit responsible for qp’s dephasing. In an effort to quench the neutral modes, we plan to develop a new class of micro-size interferometers, based on synthetically engineered fractional modes. Flowing away from the fixed physical edge, their local environment can be controlled, making it less hospitable for the neutral modes. Having at hand our synthetized helical-type fractional modes, it is highly tempting to employ them to form localize para-fermions, which will extend the family of exotic states. This can be done by proximitizing them to a superconductor, or gapping them via inter-mode coupling. The less familiar thermal conductance measurements, which we recently developed (under ERC), will be applied throughout our work to identify ‘topological orders’ of exotic states; namely, distinguishing between abelian and non-abelian fractional states. The proposal is based on an intensive and continuous MBE effort, aimed at developing extremely high purity, GaAs based, structures. Among them, structures that support our new synthetic modes that are amenable to manipulation, and others that host rare exotic states, such as v=5/2, 12/5, 19/8, and 35/16.

Mots-clés : abelian and non abelian states in fqhe,interference of quasiparticles,exchange statistics,thermal conductance of fractional states
Projet ERC : Resolve (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 149187.0 €

Since their invention, super-resolution microscopy approaches are starting to transform research in the life sciences by enabling spatial resolution below the classical diffraction limit of light. In order to establish super-resolution microscopy as a standard research tool in the life sciences, researchers need to be able to readily access the three main technological pillars of super-resolution microscopy: instrumentation, software, and labeling probes. To date, the instrumentation is typically a very costly and complex microscope that requires skilled personnel for its operation. The software is either a non-user-friendly, but freely available solution, or a pricey commercial option that comes together with the costly microscope. Finally, the commercially available labeling probes so far suffer from several shortcomings in terms of performance and their multiplexing capability. During the ERC-funded project MolMap, we developed novel solutions for all three technological pillars. We constructed a prototype for an affordable super-resolution microscope with an estimated cost of only a fraction of the price of currently available commercial options. In addition, we developed a novel and user-friendly software platform as well as customizable labeling probes for sequential imaging of a multitude of targets. Together, these developments have the potential to be integrated into a high-performance and affordable super-resolution platform to become standard in life science laboratories such as nowadays cell culture microscopes. The aim of this Proof-of-Concept proposal is to further optimize the three technologies and to adapt the fully integrated platform to market needs.

Mots-clés : super resolution microscopy,dna nanotechnology,single molecule biophysics,multiplexing,fluorescence labeling,immunolabeling
Projet ERC : PEGASOS (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed matter physics
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 : 150000.0 €

Single photons play in important part in the development of quantum technologies, particularly in the fields of communication and networks. There are many potential candidates of single-photon sources with varying degrees of quality and efficiency, and there is a collective push towards catapulting solid-state quantum light sources into real applications needed for the development of quantum technologies. To that end, the current ERC Consolidator Grant (from which this PoC proposal draws highly) focuses on semiconductor spin-photon interfaces and aims to develop them where milestones such as distant spin qubit entanglement can be demonstrated. While the majority of the deliverables have been reached, the key challenge of scalability still causes concern for conventional III-V-based semiconductor quantum dots. Conventional semiconductor quantum dots individually have stellar optical properties, but their random occurrence and their requirement to be embedded deep inside the host semiconductor makes it difficult to devise large-scale on-chip quantum devices with integrated photonic circuitry beyond a few quantum dots. During the ERC Consolidator Grant we have invented a completely new way to create quantum dots in other, less conventional semiconductors: atomically thin 2d materials. With this technique we are able to create very large quantum dot arrays with unprecedented location accuracy and comfortably in the thousands and have demonstrated all-electrical triggering of single photons. The invention is patented and there is a very recent spin-off company aiming to commercialise this system for high-yield large-band with quantum light sources. The immediate application areas are space QKD and quantum random number generation.

Mots-clés : single photons,quantum optics,2d materials,solid state quantum devices
Projet ERC : HISTOID (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : The Francis Crick Institute — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 410000.0 €

Skeletal muscle is the most abundant human tissue and contains mainly post-mitotic nuclei. It also expresses the largest gene known in nature – dystrophin – whose mutations cause Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the most frequent and incurable childhood muscle disorder. These characteristics create hurdles that negatively impact on the development of therapies for muscle diseases, ranging from acute tissue loss to chronic neuromuscular disorders. Moreover, a lack of humanised models of muscle regeneration delays the understanding of its regenerative dynamics. My work has pioneered the use of human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to generate genetically corrected myogenic cells for the autologous cell therapy of muscular dystrophies. Here I propose to exploit this technology together with biocompatible materials to develop three dimensional, iPS cell-derived, patient-specific artificial muscles. These bioengineered skeletal muscles will provide a model to study human muscle regeneration and a platform for tissue engineering and therapy development for severe muscle diseases. The project will be developed in two phases. First we will develop the iPS cell-derived muscle in vitro, introducing cell types and stimuli necessary to obtain a functional tissue. In the second phase we will exploit the muscle “organoids” for regenerative medicine and drug development. Specifically, we will investigate the artificial muscle potential for tissue replacement in vivo and then model different muscular dystrophies in vitro to screen drugs with therapeutic relevance. Finally, we will combine the tools and knowledge developed in the two aforementioned areas into a novel platform to optimise skeletal muscle gene and cell therapies. This project will bring together tissue engineering, drug development and cell therapy under the same translational technology, advancing the understanding of pathogenesis and the development of therapies for muscle diseases.

Mots-clés : disease modeling and tissue engineering
Projet ERC : PATCHED (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : University of Minho — Pays : Portugal — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Skin wounds represent a significant economic and social burden, associated with a long-lasting nature and need of care. Most of the commercially available patches for wound healing have been proved very useful in wound management but are yet to demonstrate a direct effect on the progression of the healing. This has significant implications in the quality of the clinical results obtained so far. Skin patches can be substantially improved in terms of the healing time, with clear benefits in the patient’s quality of life and in reducing health care systems costs, as well as on the quality of the new skin. The use of hydrogel-based patches has clear advantages in maintaining the moist environment required for improved healing but those devices are not yet designed to actively aid the healing process. Because the healing cascade is a complex and step wise process, PATCHED proposes to proof the feasibility and efficacy of a hydrogel-based patch designed to address that complexity and time dependence. PATCHED relies on the versatility of a technology developed under the scope of ComplexiTE ERC AdG that will allow extending its outputs towards a concurrent biomedical application. Therefore PATCHED will produce a prototype of an innovative multi-component hydrogel-based patch that contains selected biomolecules that will have different actions according to different microenvironments of the wound. By tailoring the composition, size and shape of the components, a time-dependent release of the biomolecules will be achieved according to the different healing microenvironments. This should result in a dynamic and cooperative effect that will address the complexity of the wound process resulting in improved healing. Overall PATCHED represents the proof of concept of a commercialization opportunity that might advance the wound care market, directly impacting the life of millions of patients.

Mots-clés : biomaterials,bioactive molecules,medical device,skin,tissue engineering,hydrogel,controlled release
Projet ERC : TweakDreams (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Entité participante : IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1488270.0 €

Sleep and wakefulness have traditionally been regarded as two mutually exclusive states characterized by differences in consciousness and responsiveness to the environment. However, the last two decades of research have demonstrated that sleep is actually a locally regulated phenomenon and that cortical islands of sleep- and wake-like activity can often coexist across distinct brain areas. Intriguingly, this mosaic of activity is also directly related to the presence and content of mental activity during sleep. In line with this, many sleep disorders, including insomnia and arousal disorders, are associated with significant local alterations in the balance between wake- and sleep-like activity. In spite of these considerations, the classical view of sleep as a uniform global state is still dominant in both basic and clinical research. Moreover, it remains unclear whether the occurrence of local wake-like activity is related to specific physiological functions of sleep. The objective of this project is to progress towards a deep understanding of the mechanisms that regulate sleep at a local level through the exploitation of known properties of the thalamocortical system. At the core of the proposal is the idea that particular sensory-stimulation protocols may allow to directly modulate sleep intensity in a local, region-specific manner. Such approaches could be used to non-invasively perturbate regional sleep-related brain activity, thus allowing to investigate the causal consequences on sleep mentation, subjective sleep quality and sleep-related functions, including learning and memory. Of note, the same approaches could also find application in counteracting alterations of local sleep regulation in pathological conditions. Knowledge gathered within the project could yield potential breakthroughs in numerous key applications of tremendous clinical, social and economic interest including treatment of sleep disorders and prevention of sleepiness-related accidents.

Mots-clés : sleep,dreams,electroencephalography
Projet ERC : iNAPS (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Helmholtz Zentrum München — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HMGU
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

Sleep is crucial to the brain’s remarkable regenerative and adaptive capabilities. Inadequate sleep is a pervasive problem that severely impairs brain function, productivity, and health. How the brain homeostatically senses sleep need and translates it into the intensified rebound sleep (RBS) that follows sleep deprivation (SD) still remains unclear. I aim to understand these mechanisms and to identify therapeutic targets that will promote consolidated, restorative sleep, enabling the development of superior sleep aids. Furthermore, this will shed light on the enigmatic yet fundamental question of the function of sleep. Astrocyte activation increases sleep, and astrocytes release adenosine (ado), a key messenger for sleep homeostasis. Thus, astrocytic-neuronal interactions likely decode sleep pressure into RBS via adenosinergic mechanisms. I discovered that cortical interneurons expressing neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) and neurokinin-1 receptor (NK1), which are selectively activated in RBS, show highly unusual excitatory responses to ado that are sensitive to sleep pressure. Furthermore, I found that knockout of a specific ado receptor in mice caused reduced numbers of cortical nNOS/NK1 neurons as well as a delayed RBS response. Based on these findings, I hypothesise that cortical nNOS/NK1 neurons play a key role in sleep homeostasis. My group now aims to 1) identify the comprehensive sleep homeostasis machinery, by building transcriptomic profiles of neurons activated during and after SD in mice using phosphorylated ribosome profiling, 2) verify the function of these newly identified neurons in sleep homeostasis by activity imaging and chemogenetic manipulation in vivo, and 3) investigate the functional role of astrocytes in the sleep homeostasis network. These studies will form the foundation for a new generation of sleep aids that are urgently needed to safeguard the productivity and health of our society.

Mots-clés : sleep,adenosine,astrocytes
Projet ERC : SLEEPCONTROL (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : TU Dresden — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TUD
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 330166.11 €

Sleep is essential for human and animal life and is broadly conserved. The nervous system induces sleep through the activation of sleep-active sleep-promoting neurons but the key mechanisms of sleep control remain to be elucidated. Recent work from my lab showed that the C. elegans nervous system contains a single sleep-active sleep-promoting neuron, called RIS, which is GABAergic and peptidergic as is its vertebrate counterpart. C. elegans shows sleep behavior and allows the easy combination of behavioral assays with functional neural imaging and genetics. Here I propose to study the single neuron RIS as a highly simplified model of a sleep-active neuron. This is a unique and novel approach to sleep research and my expertise on sleep behavior in C. elegans puts me into a pole position to study sleep. I will elucidate the molecular mechanism of activation of sleep-active neurons, analyze the mechanism of homeostasis of sleep-active neurons, and determine the molecular mechanisms by which sleep-active neurons induce sleep in the nervous system. I will combine transcriptional profiling of sleep-active neurons with physiological assays such as functional neural imaging, genetic screening, optogenetics, and functional molecular analysis of mutants. Using the highly simplified C. elegans model, I will boost sleep research and gain mechanistic insight into the regulation of sleep behavior through sleep-active neurons. This will be the first time that sleep-active neurons have been dissected in this way and I expect to identify novel conserved molecular and circuitry mechanisms. This work should provide the basis for understanding the more complex systems that control sleep in vertebrates and for understanding human sleep disorders.

Mots-clés : c  elegans,calcium imaging
Projet ERC : Somnostat (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : University of Oxford — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2374999.0 €

Sleep is vital and universal, but its biological function remains unknown. This project will seek to understand why we need to sleep by studying how the brain responds to sleep loss. My previous work in Drosophila showed that rising sleep pressure activates two dozen sleep-inducing neurons in the dorsal fan-shaped body (dFB) of the central complex. Sleep need is encoded in the electrical excitability of these neurons, which fluctuates because two potassium conductances, voltage-gated Shaker and the leak channel Sandman, are modulated antagonistically. As a consequence, dFB neurons are electrically silent during waking and persistently active during sleep. The key open question addressed in this project is the nature of the molecular changes that drive dFB neurons into the electrically active state. My preliminary data point to two dFB-intrinsic transducers of sleep pressure. First, the Shaker β subunit Hyperkinetic responds via a bound nicotinamide cofactor to oxidative by-products of mitochondrial electron transport, revealing a potential connection between energy metabolism, oxidative stress, and sleep, three processes implicated independently in lifespan, aging, and disease. To strengthen this connection, we will monitor sleep and the biophysics of dFB neurons after perturbing mitochondrial respiration or cellular redox chemistry and vice versa. Second, Rho GTPases relay currently unknown signals to the machinery responsible for the regulated endocytosis of Sandman, whose extraction from the plasma membrane is a prerequisite for switching the sleep-promoting activity of dFB neurons on. To identify these signals, we will investigate cell-autonomous, synaptic, and non-synaptic mechanisms of GTPase control. Because clear parallels exist between dFB neurons and sleep-active neurons in the mammalian hypothalamus, mechanistic insights that can currently be gained only in Drosophila are expected to have broad validity for understanding sleep and its disruptions.

Mots-clés : sleep,sleep homeostasis,potassium channel,mitochondria,neuronal circuits,drosophila melanogaster