Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : realFlow (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : Technical University of Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TUM
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1465603.75 €

Besides their application in a very broad range of engineering disciplines, physically-based simulations have become a prevalent tool for all forms of computer-generated environments. Simulations of fluids are a particularly important area that has applications ranging from the design of aerodynamic bodies to the realization of impressive visual effects in movies. However, despite their extremely wide-spread use there are fundamental problems: a lack of practical flow capturing technologies and the inherent difficulties of resolving crucial features such as turbulence. These issues are show-stoppers preventing the area from realizing its full potential for animations and interactive environments. The goal of this research is to address these central problems: 1) by designing novel data-centric approaches for fluid simulations to enable re-use, and 2) by establishing an innovative pipeline for capturing flow motions yielding details that were previously unachievable. To this end, I plan to design algorithms that tightly integrate accurate physics solvers with methods for the reconstruction of motion from volumetric images. At the same time, I will work on novel structured representations that decompose complex flows into hierarchical space-time structures. These structured virtual counter-parts will not only enable powerful avenues for intuitive editing, but will also serve as a basis for robust and efficient data-driven fluid simulations. This virtualization of flows opens the door for interactive design tools and medical applications, allowing to incorporate complex physical constraints. In addition, this research could radically change the way we work with synthetic and captured flow data, and has significant potential to break new ground in terms of data-centric work-flows for fluid simulations.

Mots-clés : physically based animation,fluid simulation,data driven methods,flow capture
Projet ERC : J-INNOVATECH (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1373500.0 €

Beyond Eureka seeks to challenge current understanding of how Japan became a global industrial power along with the model of how innovation takes place. Japan was the first Asian nation to industrialize and in a space of several decades went from a relatively isolated agrarian economy to an industrialized nation. The key assumption of this project is that a grasp of the salient features of the technological landscape during the pivotal period between 1800 and 1885 is an important tool for understanding Japan's industrialization. To date, this transitional period has been widely acknowledged as crucial for later development but remains empirically poorly understood. Recognizing the complexity of causation, this project seeks to use technology as a site for forging a more nuanced understanding of the emergence of Asia's first industrial power. By bringing technological change into historical focus, the project challenges the notion of innovation as necessarily a matter of disruption. In Japanese, for example, there is no conceptual or cultural equivalent to Eureka, to stand for a unique, distinct moment of individual ingenuity. If we choose the Eureka moment to epitomize the conception of innovation, early examples in Japanese industry are few and far between. Instead, a small but growing body of research shows that a sophisticated and patient examination of archives can reveal innovative processes in place of what historiography has described as borrowing, imitation or adaptation. This project seeks to foreground innovation as a long-term process of accumulation in which the new only could only work by taking root and embedding itself within the old, not by replacing it and starting from scratch. The team, comprising the PI and five postdoctoral fellows, will combine expertise and previously unexamined archives to bring depth and nuance to not only to the specific case of Japanese industrialization, but also more broadly of innovative processes in human past.

Mots-clés : industrialization,technology,innovation,japan
Projet ERC : CryptAnalytics (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Big data and data lakes are gold mines for data scientists with tons of applications to finance, medicine, economics, etc. But most of these data are quite sensitive and cannot be widely distributed or even just used without strong protection. One is thus facing the huge dilemma of having to make the choice between highly valuable analytics and privacy. The ERC CryptoCloud project has designed several primitives perfectly well-suited to such situations. They are quite powerful but also highly technical for appropriate deployment at scale. The European start-up Cosmian has been interested in our tools, and we have already started a fruitful collaboration. The main goal of this CryptAnalytics project is to develop a unified platform that will allow dealing with many situations, for secure analytics as business services. This will accelerate the development of Cosmian, giving a major competitive advantage on the fast emerging market of data analytics, with strong privacy guarantees by design. Companies are realizing the incredible value of privacy-preserving analytics. As a result, the number of business use-cases is exploding, but each application is a new challenge in itself, with new kinds of evaluations, new privacy concerns, and different amounts of data.

Mots-clés : cryptography,privacy,analytics,aggregations,computations
Projet ERC : APPLICAL (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cellular, Developmental and Regenerative Biology
Entité participante : University of Helsinki — Pays : Finlande — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UH
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 51750.0 €

BioBiorefineries are facing a positive economic outlook due to the ever-growing concerns for climate change, which is triggering demand towards carbon neutral materials and energy derived from renewable sources. However, the growth of the industry is hampered by their low profit margins and additional investments and innovations are needed to improve process efficiency. The key problem in migrating towards green production is the biomass recalcitrance, which is known to be a major bottleneck in the lignocellulosic biomass conversion process. The initial steps common to several biorefinery process pipelines, the extraction and sugar conversion process (saccharification), can account to as much as 40-45% of the process costs. Therefore, biorefineries can achieve extensive economic impact by addressing this part of their process through a simple business development effort. We recently made a breakthrough and obtained a biomass less recalcitrant to bioconversion into fermentable sugars. Results show that introduction of only 5% Callose in genetically modified poplars led to 90% more fermentable sugars released during saccharification experiments without any growth penalty, a frequent drawback for such innovations. In practice, this proposes added value to biorefineries through decreased raw material intake, improved throughput and improved yield. For instance, bioethanol production could expect a linear throughput increase (in the 50-90% range) with the same material intake. Moreover, the more manageable pretreatment process will also experience improved energy efficiency. In the PoC we will carry out technical proof-of-concept and commercialisation planning activities to improve the maturity, and bringing our patented innovation closer to the markets with applications ranging from biofuels, advanced materials and bioplastics to specialty chemicals. Our initial goal is to start industrial scale trials in 5 years time and achieve substantial market penetration by 2035.

Mots-clés : callose,cellulose,cell wall,poplar,biomass,biorefinery,throughput,yield,efficiencyiluc impact,bioproducts,biomaterials,bioeconomy,sustainability,commercialisation
Projet ERC : BioStealth (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : University of Twente — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

BioStealth production of implant coatings provides an exciting business opportunity. BioStealth offers unique advantages of societal and economic importance, such as public health and sick leave. Biocompatible materials, i.e. materials with proper cell response upon implantation, are attractive for restoring body function. Conventional implant coating methods lack in quality and therefore the majority, if not all, bio-coatings fail in proper interaction with host tissue, either caused by absence of biological triggers, biofouling or unwanted chemistry. This lack of proper interaction occurs fast upon implantation and disturbs specific cell interaction, eventually causing infections. Mostly, patients need rehospitalization which increase health care costs. BioStealth produces easy and cheap implant coatings by dipping or spraying lipids. BioStealth lipid coatings are air-stable and suitable for in-vivo use. BioStealth can be applied to FDA approved implant materials without changing the mechanical properties, which is key for tissue engineering and reconstructive medicine. BioStealth coatings have a tunable composition which makes them an ideal coating to improve interactions with cells. These factors greatly enhance application potential. Non-fouling lipids were suggested before, but as hydrogels are used for preconditioning implants, air-stability, fast procedures, tunable capability and the range of materials that can be coated and used in-vivo is very limited. In BioStealth innovative, robust conditioning of implants with plasma is used for lipid attachment, creating a breakthrough in integration of implants with tissue. A business case will be developed for BioStealth, covering different markets and routes for market introduction. Results of market analysis and financing needs will be combined with science-based technology comparison and used for discussions with potential industry partners. Several companies have already expressed interest in BioStealth.

Mots-clés : biological coatings
Projet ERC : BIOSTASES (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Entité participante : Centre national de la recherche scientifique — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNRS
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2092644.0 €

Biodiversity loss is one of the greatest environmental challenges of our time. There is mounting evidence that biodiversity increases the stability of ecosystem functions and services, suggesting that it may be critical to the sustainability of ecosystems and human societies in the face of environmental changes. Classical ecological theory, however, has focused on measures of stability that cannot explain and predict these stabilizing effects, especially in spatial systems. The goal of BIOSTASES is to develop a coherent body of new theory on the stability of ecosystems and coupled social–ecological systems and its relationships with biodiversity at multiple spatial scales that can better inform empirical research. BIOSTASES will reach this goal through four complementary objectives. First, it will propose a mathematical framework focused on temporal variability as an empirically relevant measure of stability, and use this framework to build robust early warning signals for critical transitions. Second, it will use dynamical metacommunity models to explore a wide range of novel questions related to ecosystem stability and diversity–stability relationships across scales. Third, it will study the stability of complex meta-ecosystems to provide new perspectives on the stability of food webs and on synergies and trade-offs between multiple ecosystem services across space. Fourth, it will develop novel theory to study the long-term dynamics and sustainability of coupled social–ecological systems. BIOSTASES proposes an ambitious innovative research programme that will provide new perspectives on the stability and sustainability of ecological and coupled social–ecological systems in the face of environmental changes. It will contribute to bridging the gaps between theoretical and empirical ecology and between ecology and social sciences, and to developing new approaches in biodiversity conservation, landscape management, and sustainable development.

Mots-clés : ecosystems,social ecological systems,stability,spatial ecology
Projet ERC : BIOFAGE (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental Biology, Ecology and Evolution
Entité participante : University of Basel — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 126125.0 €

Biofilms are antibiotic-resistant, sessile bacterial communities that occupy most moist surfaces on Earth and represent a major mode of bacterial life. Another common feature of bacterial life is exposure to viral parasites (termed phages), which are a dominant force in bacterial population control throughout nature. Surprisingly, almost nothing is known about the interactions between biofilm-dwelling bacteria and phages. This proposal is designed to fill this gap using a combination of novel methodology, experimental systems, and mathematical modeling. We have recently developed a new microscopic imaging technique that allows us to image and track all individual cells and their gene expression inside biofilms. First, we will use this technique for tracking the population dynamics of bacteria and phages within biofilms at single cell resolution. By genetically manipulating bacterial hosts and their phages, and by varying environmental conditions, we will investigate the fundamental biological and physical determinants of phage spread within biofilm communities. Second, we will study how biofilms respond to phage attack on both intra-generational and evolutionary time scales, focusing in particular on proximate response mechanisms and the population dynamics of phage-resistant and phage-susceptible cells as a function of biofilm spatial structure. Lastly, we will combine our novel insights to engineer phages that manipulate the composition of biofilm communities, either by subtraction of particular bacterial species or by addition of novel phenotypes to existing biofilm community members. Altogether, the proposed research promises to uncover the major mechanistic and evolutionary elements of biofilm-phage interactions. This combined work will greatly enrich our knowledge of microbial ecology and motivate novel strategies for bacterial biofilm control, an increasingly urgent priority in light of widespread antibiotic resistance.
Projet ERC : REDOX SHIELDS (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Ruhr University Bochum — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : RUB
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 763456.26 €

Biological or molecular catalysts built from Earth-abundant elements are envisioned as economically viable alternatives to the scarce noble metals that are currently used in renewable energy conversion. However, their fragility and O2 sensitivity have been obstacles to their adoption in industry. We have recently proposed O2 quenching matrices for protecting intrinsically O2-sensitive catalysts for use in anodic (oxidative) processes. We have demonstrated that even hydrogenases, the highly sensitive metalloenzymes that oxidize H2, can be used under the harsh conditions encountered in operating fuel cells. However, attempts to reverse the concept for the protection of cathodic (reductive) processes, such as H2 evolution, have been unsuccessful so far. In this case, the electrode generates the reducing agents in the form of electrons, which are needed for both H2 generation and reductive O2 quenching. The competition between the two reactions results in insufficient protection from O2 and deactivation of the catalyst. The objective is to design an alternative electron pathway that relies on H2 as a charge carrier to efficiently shuttle the reductive force to the matrix boundaries and quench the incoming O2. We will develop novel electron mediators with dual functionalities to enable the reversible H2/H+ interconversion and to achieve the complete reduction of O2 to water. We will focus on organic systems, as well as metal complexes based on Earth-abundant elements with tunable ligand spheres, to adjust their redox potentials for the desired direction of the electron flow and toward fast O2 reduction kinetics. The synthetic efforts will be supported by electrochemical modelling to predict the required properties of the redox matrix for efficient protection. After establishing the protection principle, we will demonstrate its practical use for implementing sensitive bio-catalysts for electrochemical H2 evolution under conditions relevant to energy conversion processes.
Projet ERC : SUNLIGHTING (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : University of Copenhagen — Pays : Danemark — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCPH
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 142783.75 €

Biological production of high-value compounds such as medicines, flavors, fragrances and food ingredients, is predicted to constitute 50% of the World market by 2025 thus representing a commercial hotspot. A competitive edge for European industry within this domain is therefore important. Today, 40% of prescribed medicinal drugs originate or are derived from rare or difficult to cultivate medicinal plants which typically contain the compounds in very low amounts and in complex mixtures. We have demonstrated that by using synthetic biology we can build a solar powered platform for production of key high-value compounds within the diterpenoid class in green cells (cyanobacteria/moss/algae). The diterpenoids are excreted into the growth medium offering easy isolation. This provides a highly profitable and attainable opportunity to produce a large number of medicinal compounds at highly reduced costs. The production platform is easily adaptable to make structural analogs and entirely new structures. Combinatorial libraries can be developed to enable screening for desired new functionalities. The envisioned production platform includes the full chain from pathway discovery, host optimization, scale-up, extraction and final product isolation and offers entry points for industrial development and exit points for adaptation to existing pipelines. Based on the advances made within the ERC Advanced Grant the focus of this PoC is to optimize the scientific breakthroughs’ market adaptation, specifically focused on the compounds Forskolin and Ingenol-3-angelate as proof-of-concept of the market value of the production platform. The envisioned full-chain focus offers potent financial opportunities and a new vision for biobased production across Europe in a re-invigorated sustainable greenhouse industry offering new job opportunities in full harmony with the envisioned Europe2020 and Horizon2020 goals.

Mots-clés : plant derived drugs,food ingredients,flavors,fragrances,cosmetics,new to nature drugs,sustainable production,solar energy driven,photochemical production,diterpenoids,photosynthesis
Projet ERC : RG.BIO (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
Entité participante : National Institute for Nuclear Physics — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : INFN
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 90000.0 €

Biological systems displaying collective behaviour are characterized by strong spatio-temporal correlations, which partly transcend the multiform diversity of their microscopic details, much as it happens in statistical physics systems close to a critical point. Recent experiments show that collective biological systems conform to another hallmark of statistical physics, namely scaling. Scaling laws have been found to be valid both at the static and at the dynamic level, although with critical exponents unlike any known model. Building on the experimental evidence of strong correlations and scaling laws, I will develop a novel renormalization group (RG) approach to strongly correlated biological systems, with the purpose of classifying into new universality classes the collective phenomena of life. The key theoretical idea of the method is to perform an expansion around an equilibrium field theory in which the interaction network between the individuals in the group is fixed, and to assess the stability of the resulting RG fixed points with respect to weak off-equilibrium effects, complementing the RG flow with the standard loop expansion around the upper critical dimension. The renormalization group will allow us to go beyond the hydrodynamic regime of small fluctuations, thus pushing theoretical prediction into the critical region of the parameters, where the correlation length scales with the system's size, a region experiments show to be inhabited by several biological systems. To define the starting field theory in the most economic way I will study the role of effective symmetries in giving rise to weakly conserved quantities and non-dissipative terms, and assess their stability under the RG flow. Finally, my lab will conduct new experimental campaigns on flocks (starlings, swifts), swarms (midges, mosquitoes) and cell colonies, to explore and test the new universality classes identified by the renormalization group approach.

Mots-clés : renormalization group,field theory,collective behaviour