Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : FLAVE (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed matter physics
Entité participante : Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CEA
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499094.0 €

Turbulence in natural flows is an outstanding challenge with key implications for the energetics of planets, stars, oceans, and the Earth’s climate system. Such natural flows interact with waves, radiation or a combination thereof: surface waves and solar radiation on oceans and lakes, bulk waves and radiation inside the rapidly rotating and electrically conducting solar interior, etc. Standard simplified models often discard waves, radiation, or both, with dramatic consequences for the energy budget of natural flows: geostrophic models neglect waves, and Rayleigh-Bénard thermal convection considers heat diffusively injected through a solid boundary, in strong contrast with radiative heating. The purpose of the present multidisciplinary project is to develop a consistent and coupled description of natural flows interacting with waves and radiation, to properly assess their energy budget: • Because resolving surface waves in global ocean models will remain out-of-reach for decades, I will derive and investigate reduced equations describing their two-way coupling to the ocean currents, with timely implications for the upwelling of nutrients, the strength of the global ocean circulation and ultimately CO2 sequestration and the climate system. • Building on my recent advances in the field of rotating and magnetohydrodynamic turbulence, I will derive a set of reduced equations to simulate such turbulent flows in the vicinity of the transition where bulk 3D waves appear on a 2D turbulent flow. This approach will allow me to reach unprecedented parameter regimes, orders of magnitude beyond state-of-the-art 3D direct numerical simulations (DNS). • Finally, I will combine state-of-the-art DNS with a versatile experimental platform to determine the structure, kinetic energy and heat transport of turbulent radiative convection in various geometries. I will extrapolate the resulting scaling-laws to the ocean circulation, the mixing in lakes and the solar tachocline.

Mots-clés : turbulence,geophysical and astrophysical fluid dynamics
Projet ERC : RLeap (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : RWTH Aachen University — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : RWTH
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1827325.15 €

Two of the main research threads in AI revolve around the development of data-based learners capable of inferring behavior and functions from experience and data, and model-based solvers capable of tackling well-defined but intractable models like SAT, classical planning, and Bayesian networks. Learners, and in particular deep learners, have achieved considerable success but result in black boxes that do not have the flexibility, transparency, and generality of their model-based counterparts. Solvers, on the other hand, require models which are hard to build by hand. RLeap is aimed at achieving an integration of learners and solvers in the context of planning by addressing and solving the problem of learning first-order planning representations from raw perceptions alone without using any prior symbolic knowledge. The ability to construct first-order symbolic representations and using them for expressing, communicating, achieving, and recognizing goals is a main component of human intelligence and a fundamental, open research problem in AI. The success of RLeap requires the development of radically new ideas and methods that will build on those of a number of related areas that include planning, learning, knowledge representation, combinatorial optimization and SAT. The approach to be pursued is based on a clear separation between learning the symbolic representations themselves, that is cast as a combinatorial problem, and learning the interpretations of those representations, that is cast as a supervised learning problem from targets obtained from the first part. RLeap will address both problems, not just in the planning setting but in the generalized planning setting as well where plans are general strategies. The project can make a significant difference in how general, explainable, and trustworthy AI can be understood and achieved. The PI has made key contribution to the main themes of the project that make him uniquely qualified to carry it forward.

Mots-clés : planning,learning symbolic representations from data
Projet ERC : KAIROS (Horizon 2020, appel 2020, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
Entité participante : European Organization for Nuclear Research — Pays : Suisse — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CERN
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1306250.0 €

Two pillars of modern physics are Quantum Field Theory (QFT) and General Relativity (GR). Together they describe a vast corpus of phenomena ranging from the smallest scales accessible with modern accelerators to the largest distances observed with modern telescopes. Establishing these frameworks is a triumph of 20th-century physics. Our understanding of both is not satisfactory. On the QFT side, we lack tools to analyze the strong coupling regime. On the GR side, we do not understand how to make it quantum. The insight of holography is that these two problems are deeply connected, in other words, QFT and Quantum Gravity (QG) are different realizations of the same underlying mathematical structure and physical principles. Providing us with this fundamental insight, holography does not tell us what the underlying structure is. The challenge for 21st-century physics is to understand it. The aim of the present proposal is to establish a research team at CERN that: a) will {\it develop new nonperturbative Lorentzian bootstrap methods} as a part of a larger quest of revealing the unifying mathematical structure and physical principles that underlie both QFT and QG; b) use these methods for state-of-the-art {\it computations of real-time physical observables} which are not accessible using conventional methods. This will lead to new insights into the fundamental properties of QFT, QG, and holography which relates the two. The principal novelty of the project is in its focus on the nonperturbative real-time dynamics, as opposed to Euclidean observables which are typically studied using the current bootstrap or other methods. Bootstrap takes fundamental principles of physics, such as causality, locality, and unitarity, and pushes their consequences to the extreme. Combined with insights from holography, bootstrap methods offer an unprecedented set of tools for diving into uncharted territories of QFT and QG.

Mots-clés : conformal bootstrap,s matrix,holography,quantum gravity
Projet ERC : FOCUS (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : Institut français de recherche pour l'exploitation de la mer — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : Ifremer
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 723013.0 €

Two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is covered by water and thus largely inaccessible to modern networks of seismological instruments. The FOCUS project is poised to revolutionize seismic monitoring of the seafloor through a novel use of fiber optic cables to improve hazard assessment and increase early warning capability. Laser reflectometry using BOTDR, commonly used for structural health monitoring of large-scale engineering structures (e.g. - bridges, dams, pipelines, etc.), can measure very small strains (< 1 mm) at very large distances (10 - 200 km). It has never been used to monitor deformation caused by active faults on the seafloor. The objective of the FOCUS project is to demonstrate that this technique can measure small (1 - 2 cm) displacements on a primary test site offshore Sicily where the 28 km long EMSO Catania cable crosses the recently mapped North Alfeo Fault. BOTDR observations must be calibrated by other independent measurements. Therefore, targeted marine geophysical surveys of the seafloor along the trace of the cable and faults are planned, with micro-bathymetry, high-resolution seismics, seafloor seismic stations and use of seafloor geodetic instruments to quantify fault displacement. Once the BOTDR fault-monitoring technique has been tested and calibrated offshore Sicily, the goal is to expand it to other fiber optic cable networks, either existing research networks in earthquake hazard zones (Japan, Cascadia) or to the Mediterranean region through access to retired telecommunication cables, or through the development of dual-use cables with industry partners, (two of the anticipated outcomes of the FOCUS project). The novel secondary use of fiber optic cables as described by FOCUS represents a potentially tremendous breakthrough in seismology, tectonics and natural hazard early warning capability, one that could turn Earth’s future undersea communication infrastructure into a seismological monitoring network of unprecedented scale.

Mots-clés : earthquake hazard,active faults,seafloor deformation,montitoring,fiber optic cables,laser reflectometry,botdr,strain measurements,mediterranean,sicily,ionian sea
Projet ERC : TRANSLATIONAL (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : University of Gothenburg — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1957230.0 €

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is an escalating health problem of enormous proportions. Current treatment strategies are unable to stop disease progression and prevent the devastating complications. Clinical guidelines emphasise the need for personalized treatment. However, this is currently implemented on trial-and-error fashion. We have recently found that T2D patients can be divided into four clusters, each with different characteristics. This represents a major step forward by pointing out the high variability of the pathophysiology and leads us to propose that anti-diabetic treatment should ideally target the underlying pathophysiology of each patient. The overall goal is to test this proposition by targeting existing and new treatment to patients who are archetypes of the two most severe T2D clusters, characterised by poor insulin secretion and pronounced insulin resistance, respectively. As a starting point, we will study how treatment response to existing drugs is influenced by pathophysiological features and also the gut microbiota. Next, we will expand on our recent demonstration that b-cells dedifferentiate in T2D and define the functional and gene expression changes that cause secretory failure. These mechanistic insights will be used to identify new targets for b-cell preservation, which is essential to stop disease progression, in particular in patients with poor secretion. Finally, we will study new compounds for tailored treatment, including sulforaphane as an early intervention for those with severe insulin resistance. My combined training in cell-physiology, bioinformatics and clinical medicine is unusual but necessary to conduct this multi-disciplinary programme. Whilst the programme builds firmly on my past research, it extends far beyond what I have attempted previously by exploiting novel state-of-the-art methodology to address central metabolic questions of high relevance to understand the causes, management and – ultimately – prevention of diabetes.

Mots-clés : diabetes,type 2 diabetes,insulin secretion,personalized treatment,pancreatic islet
Projet ERC : SUPERSTARS (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : Trinity College Dublin — Pays : Irlande — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TCD
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1768506.3 €

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are the incredibly luminous deaths of white dwarfs in binaries. They play a vital role in chemical enrichment, galaxy feedback, stellar evolution, and were instrumental in the discovery of dark energy. However, what are the progenitor systems of SNe Ia, and how they explode remains a mystery. My recent work has concluded the controversial result that there may be more than one way to produce SNe Ia. As SN Ia cosmology samples reach higher precision, understanding subtle differences in their properties becomes increasingly important. A surprising diversity in white-dwarf explosions has also been uncovered, with a much wider-than-expected range in luminosities, light-curve timescales and spectral properties. A key open question is ‘What explosion mechanisms result in normal SNe Ia compared to more exotic transients?’ My team will use novel early-time observations (within hours of explosion) of 100 SNe Ia in a volume-limited search (<75 Mpc). The targets will come from the ATLAS and Pan-STARRS surveys that will provide unprecedented sky coverage and cadence (>20000 square degrees, up to four times a night). These data will be combined with key progenitor diagnostics of each SN (companion interaction, circumstellar material, central density studies). The observed zoo of transients predicted to result from white-dwarf explosions (He-shell explosions, tidal-disruption events, violent mergers) will also be investigated, with the goal of constraining the mechanisms by which white dwarfs can explode. My access to ATLAS/Pan-STARRS and my previous experience puts me in a unique position to obtain ‘day-zero’ light curves, rapid spectroscopic follow-up, and late-time observations. The data will be analysed with detailed spectral modelling to unveil the progenitors and diversity of SNe Ia. This project is timely with the potential for significant breakthroughs to be made before the start of the next-generation ‘transient machine’, LSST in ~2021.
Projet ERC : REScala (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Proof of concept grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer science and informatics
Entité participante : Technical University of Darmstadt — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Ubiquitous connectivity of digital and physical worlds enabled by the convergence of edge (IoT, mobile), in-network and cloud computing plus algorithmic advances in artificial intelligence (AI) promise breakthroughs in next-generation Distributed Data-driven Reactive Applications (DRAs), which promise to radically innovate the economy and induce society-scale impact on production, mobility, energy, health, etc. But, such next-generation DRAs are not only expensive and difficult to develop, deploy, and maintain; it is also extremely hard to reason about and to ensure their quality. The goal of this Proof of Concept proposal is to build a business strategy for the implementation and provisioning of enterprise-level programming and methodological support for DRAs. The comprehensive REScala package provides necessary programming tools to support the cost-effective and quality-ensuring implementation of next-generation DRAs across application domains (mobility, energy, health, environment, etc.), involving and combining intelligent user interfaces and computations running on distributed computing platforms with decentralised state. Summarizing, REScala holds great promise to be an important enabler of next-generation DRAs. We expect the innovation potential of this PoC project to be comparable to that unleashed by the invention of smartphone platforms, which unified a myriad of separated silo technologies that emerged on top of mobile communication technology. With REScala’s distributed and decentralised computing model, developers can plug-in their DRAs similar to installing new apps.

Mots-clés : reactive data intensive applications,programming platform
Projet ERC : Qosmology (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe sciences
Entité participante : Max Planck Society — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : MPG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1239843.75 €

Ultimately, every question in cosmology leads back to the question of initial conditions. Classical physics, even in the context of an inflationary phase, cannot address this question – this is the domain of quantum cosmology. The best known theories of initial conditions are the no-boundary and tunnelling proposals. Both were formulated somewhat heuristically, in the path integral approach to quantising gravity. And due to a lack of adequate means, progress has been relatively modest in this subject. Qosmology will apply new mathematical methods, based on Picard-Lefschetz theory, to define gravitational path integrals rigorously for the first time. Generalised theoretical concepts, in particular tunnelling in complex time, will lead to new types of solutions describing quantum transitions between contracting and expanding universes, effectively providing quantum resolutions of the big bang. These solutions will not only extend the scope of the existing theories of initial conditions, but may suggest entirely novel approaches. In addition Qosmology will continuously improve existing numerical methods, allowing for extensive studies of the big-bang-resolving solutions as well as of quantum tunnelling effects generally. Moving beyond a description of the background, the fluctuations in the universe and an observational verification of their quantum origin are of fundamental interest. Are there remnants of quantum correlations in the distribution of galaxies in our universe? Qosmology will forge new paths by exploring quantum gravitational effects, exploiting novel measures of quantumness, and focussing on the interconnectedness between background and fluctuations, dynamics and initial conditions. Qosmology will, for the first time since the 1980s, reach a significant advance in our understanding of quantum theory applied to the universe as a whole.

Mots-clés : quantum cosmology,big bang,initial conditions,primordial cosmological perturbations
Projet ERC : HBEAM (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Max Planck Society — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : MPG
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499356.27 €

Ultra-short light pulses have become invaluable in time-resolved studies in chemistry and physics. But many important processes are initiated by collisions. While lasers have revolutionized experiments using light pulses, experimentally proven concepts for producing ultra-short pulses of neutral matter are still in their infancy. Hence, our ability to control when a collision occurs is still extremely limited. Recently, we have reported bunch-compression photolysis, the first demonstrated method for producing ultra-short pulses of neutral matter. Here, photolysis of jet-cooled hydrogen iodide is carried out with femto-second laser pulses whose frequency bandwidth has been spatially ordered. Thus, fast H-atom photoproducts overtake slow ones, producing an ultra-short pulse.The central objective of this project is to develop bunch-compression photolysis as a tool for ultrafast timing experiments involving collisions of ultrashort pulses of H-atoms at synchronously photo-excited solid surfaces. Bunch-compression photolysis allows collisions at a surface to be synchronized with photoexcitation on the ps time scale, opening up new ways to study the dynamics of collisions at selectively photo-excited surfaces that have not yet relaxed. Studies on collision dynamics involving excitons produced in 2D semiconductors is one exciting direction for this work. Experiments on synchronized H atom collisions with vibrationally excited surfaces prepared by infrared photoexcitation is another - this enables kinetics experiments with surface site-specificity as well as the direct observation of reaction intermediates. The work and ideas presented here show how to overcome the most challenging barrier to a new class of time-resolved dynamics experiments, opening new frontiers in the study of surface chemistry, where we will begin to understand how selected degrees of freedom of the solid influence collision dynamics and reaction rates.
Projet ERC : MIMAS (Horizon 2020, appel 2014, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental constituents of matter
Entité participante : Friedrich Schiller University Jena — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : FSU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2373750.0 €

Ultrafast lasers, which allow the concentration of light in space and time, have been instrumental in revolutionizing industrial production technologies, medical applications and cutting-edge fundamental research. A common demand for many applications is the combination of maximum pulse peak powers with maximum average powers, in extreme cases involving petawatt (PW) peak powers and megawatt (MW) average powers. Additionally, these parameters must be achieved together with an optimum beam quality and high efficiency. The MIMAS project aims to address these demands and enable new realms of performance for ultrafast lasers. The basic idea is spatially and temporally separated amplification of ultrashort laser pulses followed by coherent combination. This overcomes all the scaling limitations known in single-emitter systems. Moreover, the spatially separated amplification will be developed to an integrated and highly compact configuration: an ytterbium-doped multicore fiber. In addition, it is proposed that a sequence of pulses be amplified with an encoded phase pattern, causing a coherent pulse stacking at the system output. The targeted laser pulse parameters are completely beyond the scope of current laser technology and therefore able to revolutionize many applications. The target is to generate a pulse energy of >1J at 10kHz repetition rate, i.e. an average power of >10 kW, with a wall-plug efficiency of >10%. Together with a pulse duration of <200fs, such performance results in a pulse peak power of >5 TW in a scalable architecture. This outstanding performance, which is three orders of magnitude above the capabilities of today’s laser systems, is emitted from only two fibers and features excellent beam quality. I am deeply convinced that such an ultrafast laser source will be the key element in a number of experiments in modern sciences; not only in fundamental physics but also in biology and medicine, it will stimulate seminal discoveries and breakthroughs.

Mots-clés : ultrafast fiber lasers,high average and high peak power lasers,coherent combination of ultrafast lasers,fiber design and fabrication