Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : Q-MEME (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental Constituents of Matter
Entité participante : Nederlandse organisatie voor wetenschappelijk onderzoek — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : NWO
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2660000.0 €

Nano- and micromechanical resonators, with their high coherence and low mass, serve as extremely good sensors of small forces and particles. They are especially powerful in combination with optical laser fields, which can measure mechanical motion down to the level where quantum mechanics is needed to describe it. The performance of mechanical quantum sensors, and in fact our ability to measure their displacement, is however limited by fundamental concepts: Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle dictates the smallest vibration that can be resolved. And time-reversal symmetry bounds the measurement rate of a sensor. In this project, I challenge both limits – evading them by making nanomechanical resonators interact strongly with temporally controlled and nano-confined light fields. The experiments I propose will project a macroscopic mechanical object in a pure quantum state, through the mere act of performing a strong measurement. I aim to show that such measurements can entangle the object’s internal degrees of freedom, and can be used to boost metrology performance. By breaking time-reversal symmetry through optical control, I seek to enhance the sensitivity of mechanical force sensors. I will investigate whether the measurement interaction can be employed to coherently convert optical to mechanical states, and to manipulate optical signals down to the single-photon level. The realization of these goals will radically advance mechanical quantum sensing, create coherent interfaces for quantum communication, and establish novel ways to control light and motion at the quantum level. Moreover, we will gain a new fundamental understanding of metrology and sensing performance in basic systems that transcend the mechanical domain. Finally, these foundational experiments will bring intriguing quantum effects in full view in ‘tangible’ objects, and test whether they can in fact exist at such macroscopic scales.

Mots-clés : cavity optomechanics,quantum measurement,nanophotonics,nanomechanical resonators
Projet ERC : PREPARE (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Université de Bergen — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

In the last decade, societies across the world have been challenged by fragmenting public debate, fueled by algorithmically steered social media and new threats of propaganda and misinformation. The dual tendency of political apathy and polarization pose grave problems for a well-functioning democracy. As the social sciences appear unable to mitigate the challenges with a seemingly ignorant and passive citizenry, PREPARE proposes a radically new approach. PREPARE fills a research gap on the impact of algorithmic media and datafied everyday life on citizens? potential for political engagement. Current research on people's connection to the public is predominately interested in measuring the political knowledge of so-called "informed citizens", or studying the everyday micro-aspects of news media use. The leap proposed by PREPARE changes the focus from each citizen's "informedness" to develop and test a groundbreaking theory of distributed preparedness, building a cohesive theory for a fragmented field. PREPARE will stake out a new path for research on citizens? role in democracies. The project will develop a feasible, normative theory of citizens? orientations to the sphere of politics in datafied societies: their networks for public connection. PREPARE's research questions concern 1) how people stay prepared to engage with public issues, and 2) what resources they need to move from stand-by to engage. PREPARE substantiates the new theory through thickening of big data, with three ethnographies integrated with digital methods, of so-called disconnected citizens. The three groups are young urban immigrants, rural manual workers, and women outside the labour market. The path cleared by PREPARE allows research to constructively engage with improving democratic societies and civic awareness.

Mots-clés : media use,news consumption,public sphere,qualitative approach,democratic theory
Projet ERC : COMPLEX (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Université de Bergen — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

The fundamental legal doctrine of criminal insanity is found in most legal orders. It concerns a defendant’s lack of capacity for responsible action and defines the justifiable use of punishment. It is a key entrance point for comprehending how law conceives of agency and deviancy, but also a highly controversial legal construct. A major concern is that there is a mismatch between how criminal insanity has been paradigmatically understood in law and how it is today inevitably associated with mental disorders. This doctrine has been formulated in terms of folk psychological notions of rational agency but increasingly relies on psychiatric diagnoses and symptoms, with forensic experts as premise providers in criminal proceedings. However, psychiatric constructs were not developed for criminal law and people diagnosed with mental disorders may have vastly varying functional impairments. Legal research has yet to elucidate how this complexity plays out in criminal insanity rules and judgements. There is a pressing need for cross-country empirical and interdisciplinary legal studies that integrate insights from mind sciences to explore this matter. The lack of legal clarity about the relevance of mental disorders raises concerns about the rule of law, unequal treatment, and criminal justice. COMPLEX will advance our understanding of law’s associations between criminal insanity and mental disorders, with a research design that transcends conventional legal research by combining cross-country empirical studies of current legal doctrines with interdisciplinary analysis of how the normative and factual legal premises about mental disorders involved in these doctrines relate to philosophy and mind sciences. The ambition is to provide a new theoretical framework for understanding mental disorders in criminal law. COMPLEX has the potential to challenge current paradigms and have major implications for both science and society.

Mots-clés : criminal law,legal doctrine of criminal insanity,legal concepts of mental disorders
Projet ERC : RESILFOREST (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
Entité participante : Institut Weizmann — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : WIS
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1999831.0 €

Trees play a major role in Earth’s water and carbon cycles. Climate change puts trees under a growing threat of drought-induced mortality. This already happens in Europe, where summers are becoming hotter and drier, and across global forest biomes. Due to their large size and long lifespan, trees need time to adapt and migrate, time they lack under the fast rate of global change. On the other hand, foersts are amog the most important ecosystems we simply cannot afford to lose. Loss of xylem hydraulic conductivity due to eruption of air bubbles is termed xylem embolism. Despite many years of studying tree responses to drought, it is still debated whether xylem embolism actually kills trees. Simultaneous processes like carbon starvation, leaf desiccation and heat damage make it harder to pinpoint the direct effects of drought on xylem enbolism. Further, while the extent of embolism avoidance has been characterized in many tree species, embolism tolerance has been rarely studied, and recovery processes are mostly unknown. Finally, a wide research gap exists between eco-physiological mechanisms at the tree scale and implications at the forest scale. This research proposal portrays a clear roadmap to resolving the open questions in tree hydraulic mechanisms under drought, and to integrating them at the forest scale. Increasing drought resilience in forests through eco-physiological mechanisms requires (1) in-situ field measurements, (2) controlled experiments to decipher tree mechanisms, and (3) advanced modeling to upscale tree-level measurements into the forest scale and support future forest management. We will combine novel techniques (custom-made micro-CT, field detection of xylem embolism and water potential, spatial mass spectrometry imaging, and more); field measurements and manipulations on mature trees; greenhouse experiments on diverse tree species; and computational modeling, to test new hypotheses aimed at increasing drought resilience of forests.

Mots-clés : tree physiology,drought,hydraulic conductance,forest productivity,forest management
Projet ERC : CMVinterplay (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and I mmunotherapy
Entité participante : Institut Weizmann — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : WIS
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

The herpesvirus human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), the largest known human virus, is a ubiquitous pathogen that infects the majority of the world's population. Although subclinical in most healthy individuals, HCMV can lead to a severe congenital disease, as well as morbidity and mortality in immunocompromised adults. Despite the high prevalence and pathogenicity of HCMV, numerous fundamental questions about this pathogen remain open. We still do not know what many of its viral proteins do and how they modulate cellular processes, we do not understand the determinants that govern dependencies and vulnerabilities of infection in different cell types, and we are missing tools that facilitate molecular dissection of HCMV in relevant infection models. In this proposal, we plan to develop and apply unique tool sets to uncover the host pathways and factors that orchestrate HCMV life cycle in different cell types and in higher complexity infection models. We propose to combine state-of-the-art high-throughput tools with mechanistic studies to comprehensively characterize how HCMV proteins perturb central host cellular processes (aim 1), identify HCMV common and cell-specific host dependencies and vulnerabilities in different cell types (aim 2) and develop an advanced platform for probing CMV dependencies in organoid and organism infection models (aim 3). The knowledge generated from these objectives will provide a comprehensive depiction of the interplay of HCMV with its host and could help expand our therapeutic options. More broadly, with its comprehensive and complementary approaches, our work will provide a paradigm for understanding complex host-pathogen interactions.

Mots-clés : cytomegalovirus,viral host interaction,genetic screen,system virology,herpesvirus
Projet ERC : EvoSexDrive (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Institut Weizmann — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : WIS
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

What are the molecular mechanisms that determine intra- and inter-species behavioral variation? We propose to address this key outstanding question in evolutionary neuroscience by exploring a striking example of adaptive evolution of female sexual behavior. Comparing two closely related nematode species that use different mating strategies, we discovered that while androdioecious (hermaphrodite-male) C. elegans hermaphrodites are indifferent to males, dioecious (female-male) C. afra females exhibit a pronounced sex drive, actively engaging in and initiating mating. Importantly, we found that under induced reproductive pressure, the passive hermaphrodites switch to female-like behavior, suggesting the existence of a suppressed neuronal circuit. In this proposal, we will employ an evolutionary comparative approach to deconstruct the neural basis of female sexual motivation, by addressing three objectives: (1) Explore and quantify the extent and molecular basis of female sexual motivation in C. afra. (2) Characterize the neuronal underpinnings of sexual attraction, by mapping gene expression, connectivity, and network dynamics in females, and (3) Investigate how mating pressure promotes sexual adaptation in C. elegans hermaphrodites, by monitoring the evolving changes in genetics, epigenetics, and the neuromodulatory network in transition states from passive to active sexual behaviors. Our suggested program challenges long-held assumptions about the role of female sexual motivation, which despite its complexity remains understudied compared to male mating behaviors. Our unique approach, utilizing the power of C. elegans alongside tool building for investigating C. afra, will not only unveil the molecular mechanisms governing the emergence of novel female sexual behaviors but also create a blueprint for understanding their evolution.

Mots-clés : c elegans,neuropeptides,evolutionary neuroscience,sexual behavior,synaptic connectivity,synaptic labeling
Projet ERC : ROVER (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : Université de Bergen — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3000000.0 €

A vigorous Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is crucial for the mild northern European climate; it brings warm water northward near the surface and returns cold, dense water at depth. In a warming climate the AMOC is projected to weaken – or even approach a tipping point. Contrary to this established view, I hypothesize that an overlooked, climate-change induced mechanism may impart resilience to the overturning: As the sea ice recedes, increasing stretches of the boundary current system around the Nordic Seas and Arctic Ocean become exposed to the atmosphere. The resulting increased ocean heat loss in winter further densifies the water in the boundary current, which is a direct pathway supplying the lower limb of the AMOC. Enhanced dense-water formation is counter-intuitive in a warming climate and not represented by current climate models, but has the potential to safeguard the northern overturning and maintain a steady supply of dense water to the AMOC. Sparse observations and preliminary results from a 1D model indicate that water mass transformation occurs in the increasingly ice-free boundary current, but its extent, importance, and future development are unknown. In ROVER, I will explore this concept through an extensive field campaign, which includes a mooring array across the boundary current and an unprecedented wintertime survey of this severely under-sampled area. Combined with targeted high-resolution modeling, I will use the comprehensive data set to document the occurrence of this process, understand its dynamics, quantify its extent, and assess its climatic importance. Dense-water formation in the boundary current system that may safeguard the northern overturning would represent a paradigm shift for water mass transformation at high latitudes and the stability of the overturning circulation. As such, ROVER is timely and will have a substantial and significant impact on the science of climate change and climate impact assessment.

Mots-clés : water mass transformation boundary current system
Projet ERC : ACQUA (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
Entité participante : Institut Weizmann — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : WIS
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1386265.0 €

Project ACQUA brings together two of the most important trends in modern cryptographic study, with the aim of maximizing their combined benefit. One is the emergence of quantum computing as a realistic computational model, and the other is the accelerated development of advanced cryptographic tools for the remote processing and control of private data.  As we aspire to a world where quantum computing is prevalent, it is necessary to prepare the proper cryptographic tools for users to utilize their data in such a world. This includes protection against quantum attackers (known as post-quantum security), ways for classical users to securely maintain and process data stored on a remote quantum device, and methods to utilize quantum powers to exceed classically achievable capabilities. Recent developments in quantum cryptographic research gave us a glimpse of the possibilities that such a world holds, but they are still few and far between. We are still far from understanding even the theoretical possibilities and limitations. Project ACQUA is a concentrated effort, drawing from the theory of quantum computing and from the theory of cryptography, towards establishing advanced cryptography in a quantum world as a viable construct and unleashing its full potential.  The project objectives consist of studying the effect of quantum computing on the foundations of cryptography, constructing relevant classical building blocks, and developing new quantum-cryptographic tools that are needed for an advanced quantum-cryptographic future.

Mots-clés : theoretical cryptography,quantum computing,foundations of cryptography
Projet ERC : ImmuneSynapsEngagers (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Institut Weizmann — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : WIS
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) targeting immune checkpoints have revolutionized cancer treatment but exhibit several challenges, most notably, limited intratumor efficacy and relatively low patient response rates. Endowing these mAbs with immune-cell-recruitment capabilities may offer the solution to these drawbacks. This assumption is based on our recent findings that the effectivity of a given checkpoint mAb relies not only on its binding to its target T-cell’s receptor but also on the direct interaction of the targeted T-cell with dendritic cells (DCs). Our results suggest that the low-frequency or dysfunctionality of such stimulating immune synapses following checkpoint mAb treatments hinder their anti-tumor efficacy. Therefore, the outcome of not taking this T-cell-DC licensing loop mechanism into account in mAb design is suboptimal checkpoint mAbs. To overcome these limitations, we propose here to develop a series of bi- and muti-specific immune synapse engager antibodies as a new approach to enforce immune interactions for cancer immunotherapy. We will apply in-vivo genetic tools and high-dimensional analysis of the immune response on the spatial, cellular, proteomic and transcriptomic levels to provide critical insights into immune synapses that mediate effective T-cell anti-tumor activity. We will then harness this knowledge to apply antibody-engineering approaches and treatment regimens to maximize anti-tumor activity. We will explore and target T-cell-DC synapses that enable antagonistic (Aim 1) and agonistic (Aim 2) checkpoint mAbs and additional types of immune cell interactions underlying favourable immune surveillance of tumors (Aim 3). This study will introduce a novel approach for cancer immunotherapy using drugs that engage physical crosstalk between key immune cells. Ideally, this study will yield reagents with potent anti-tumor efficacy and well-characterized in-vivo activities that can be readily translated for evaluation in human patients.

Mots-clés : therapeutic antibodies,bispecific antibodies,cancer immunotherapy,cancer immunity,immune checkpoint blockade,
Projet ERC : Tx-phylogeography (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Integrative B iology : from Genes and Genomes to S ystems
Entité participante : Institut Weizmann — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : WIS
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

The tumor microenvironment (TME) is a dynamic ecosystem wherein tumor cells, immune cells and stromal cells interact and evolve. One of the primary characteristics of cancer progression is the diversification, selection and expansion of tumor sub-clones in manner that largely depends on the TME, e.g., through immune responses or metabolic crosstalk. Advances in single-cell and spatial genomics provide exciting opportunities for studying how tumors evolve in their tissue context, by lending an information-rich perspective on which cell subsets are present and how they might interact. However, fundamental questions, which require the knowledge of how single tumor cells are related sub-clonally, remain challenging to study through that perspective. Fundamentally - what characterizes the immediate cellular environment of successful subclones? Here, we develop transcriptional phylogeography - a paradigm for studying tumor development in-situ, on a transcriptome-wide scale, and at single cell resolution. Our work will leverage studies by us and others that utilized CRISPR/Cas9 mutations coupled with single cell RNA sequencing to infer the lineage structure of thousands of single cells at a time. Adapting this system for in-situ profiling, we will generate the first of its kind phylogeography dataset of a tumor model. This data will allow us to identify tissue locations that harbor critical sub-clonal properties such as unrestrained growth, dedifferentiation, and metastatic seeding, and thereby investigate - through the lens of high throughput genomics- how the TME is associated with these properties. We will also identify and offer solutions for outstanding analytical questions in this nascent area, from lineage inference given sparse data to characterizing the metabolic aspects of tumor-TME cross talk. Together, these studies will help establish new causal links between the TME and tumor evolution and lay the foundation for transcriptional phylogeography analysis.

Mots-clés : single cell genomics,single cell lineage tracing,tumor evolution,tumor immunology,metabolism,phylogenetics,algorithms