Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : ESIP-RM (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences
Entité participante : Université de Tel Aviv — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TAU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1609470.0 €

I propose a novel membrane-like device that utilizes a ratchet mechanism to drive ions selectively up a concentration gradient. This device can serve as a building block for an efficient, ion selective separations technology. Ion selective separation with membrane-based processes may advance dramatically technologies for water treatment, resource extraction from sea water, ion specific sensors and many other applications. Moreover, since about 10-15% of the global energy consumption is used for chemical separations, a high efficiency, membrane-based ion separation processes can reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly. However, membrane-based ion selective separation is a longstanding unmet challenge in science and engineering. Although conventional membrane-based separation is extremely efficient in unselective separation processes such as reverse osmosis water desalination, membrane-based processes showed limited success in ion specific separations. Furthermore, the need for a molecular level control of the membrane properties, limits the scalability of most of the membrane-based ion selective separation techniques that are currently being studied. Our proposed device, the ratchet-based ion pump, is driven with a ratchet mechanism which utilizes modulations of a spatially asymmetric electric field to induce a non-zero net ion flux up a concentration gradient. We will utilize a fundamental ratchet process in which the ratchet input signal drives particles with the same charge but different transport properties in opposite directions, to design highly selective, fit-to-purpose, and real-time controlled ion separation systems thereby bypassing the limitations faced by current technologies. In this research we will combine theory, simulation and experiment to improve our understanding of the ratchet mechanism, design and optimize ratchet based ion pumps, demonstrate ion selective ratchet-based separation systems, and set their thermodynamic performance limits

Mots-clés : ratchets,ion pumps,selective ion separation
Projet ERC : IISN-DC (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Université de Tel Aviv — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TAU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2025000.0 €

Intercellular signalling networks drive tissue fundamental processes. Immune cells present a wide range of versatile functions and distinctive plasticity, which position them as tissue signalling-hubs during tissue development, homeostasis and cancer. Recent genomic advances have greatly improved our understanding of cell composition and states; however, investigation of the molecular signatures of intercellular crosstalk at the single-cell level remains limited. Exploring tissue development, homeostasis and cancer from the point of view of immune-controlled signalling networks, has the potential to reveal novel therapeutic candidates with high biological and medical impact. By applying functional assays alongside novel single-cell RNA-sequencing technologies and computational approaches, as physically interacting-cell sequencing (PIC-seq), I propose to crack the functional consequences of the whole-tissue signalling networks to revisit key developmental and cancer immunology questions: 1) What immune-related intercellular crosstalk drives tissue development and cancer? We will integrate scRNA-seq and PIC-seq analysis along mouse lung, liver and kidney development, and human carcinomas, and apply large-scale comparative cross-tissue and cross-species analysis, ex-vivo and in-vivo studies, to identify tissue-exclusive and shared signalling during tissue physiology or cancer. 2) What can we study on tumor-escape mechanisms, based on physiological signalling networks? We will perform development versus cancer large-scale molecular comparisons, in-vivo cancer models for functional perturbations, and clinical validations, to identify novel immunotherapy targets. Successful completion of the project will reveal novel cancer and developmental immunotherapy targets. Concomitantly, findings will comprise a valuable resource for tissue-molecular signalling and will generate a platform for investigating biological enigmas by elucidating consequences of cellular-communication.

Mots-clés : cell cell interactions,genomics,developmental immunology,cancer immunology,signalling networks
Projet ERC : SPP (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
Entité participante : Université de Tel Aviv — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TAU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1390625.0 €

The traditional notion of a proof offers no secrecy --- proving the validity of a blockchain transaction would reveal its details, proving qualification for a loan would reveal private financial information, and proving that a system has been hacked could reveal sensitive details about the system. Remarkably, using cryptography, this problem can be solved. Secrecy-preserving proofs are a class of protocols allowing to prove assertions about secret information, without actually revealing the information. The most prominent notion of such a proof is that of zero knowledge proofs, which reveal no information at all. Recent years have seen zero knowledge proofs transition from theory to practice. With major investment from industry and governments, they are now being deployed and standardized. Driven by large-scale applications such as blockchains, deployment efforts have put special stress on efficiency, often compromising on the core principal of rigorous security analysis based on solid hardness assumptions. At the same time, the nearing possibility of new threats such as quantum attacks, only requires stronger security.  The goal of the project is secrecy-preserving proofs that meet present day challenges, without compromising on the gold standard of cryptographic security. We envision a world where secrecy-preserving proofs are reliable enough to be used in high-stake applications, and efficient enough to be used in large-scale applications. The project will apply foundational theoretical research to overcome existing barriers and challenges toward achieving this goal.

Mots-clés : foundations of cryptography,provable security,zero knowledge proofs,non interactive zero knowledge,nizk,succinct arguments,snark,post quantum cryptography,quantum cryptography,non black box techniques,black box separations,obfuscation
Projet ERC : illicitLABOUR (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
Entité participante : Queen Mary University of London — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : QMUL
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 882000.0 €

illicitLABOUR pioneers a study of the linkages between climate change mitigation and illicit economies and the resulting implications for ecological governance. This comparative and interdisciplinary project goes beyond the current state-of-the-art research in three significant ways. First, by investigating global photovoltaic industry production networks it reveals the dark sides of the green energy sector in three geographical sites (China, Ghana, and India). Second, it advances new theoretical perspectives on risk, vulnerability, and mitigation considering the interplay between the green energy sector and the illicit economy. Third, it attempts a transformative breakthrough by developing a ‘cultural political ecology’ framework that brings cultural economy and political ecology together, pushing labour studies frontiers forward.  The research will focus on several core questions: How do we explain the economic, political, and cultural processes linking illicit labour and ecological governance? Which illicit labour regimes in mining and manufacturing processes sustain solar panel production? How do informal energy markets work? What are the social and environmental challenges raised by end-of-life photovoltaic modules? How can we understand the illicit-ecology nexus in light of these processes? And, finally, how can this analysis reveal new ways to provide clean and affordable energy for all?  Climate change mitigation and illicit labour are two major challenges of modern times, whose interconnection poses growing concerns for society, such as energy insecurity, toxic waste production, and labour exploitation. Yet this relationship has surprisingly received limited systemic attention in labour studies to date. Through an analysis of the global photovoltaic industry, a major climate change mitigation sector, illicitLABOUR casts light on those neglected actors, practices, and processes that operate in the shadow of sustainable development.

Mots-clés : climate change mitigation,global production networks,illicit labour,informal economy,cultural political economy,political ecology,economic geography
Projet ERC : EpiCentres (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Université d'Oslo — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UiO
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499197.0 €

EpiCentres investigates the development of written culture in medieval Scandinavia (1050–1550), a context uniquely characterized by centuries of interactions between different languages and alphabets. While the evolving relationship between Latin and the vernacular influenced the development of all western European literate societies, in Scandinavia, Latin and the Latin alphabet were introduced in the 11th century into a pre-existing 900-year-old written tradition comprising thousands of inscriptions in the local vernacular languages and in the runic alphabet. Rather than replacing this native tradition, the Latin one coexisted with it for 400 years, resulting in a written culture shaped by overlapping processes of spread of Latin alongside the runic tradition, increased Latinization and decline of the runes, and ‘re-vernacularization’, the increasing use of the Scandinavian languages but written in the Latin alphabet. EpiCentres will analyse these processes by studying an almost entirely overlooked body of texts comprising approximately 1500 Latin-alphabet inscriptions, together with 2500 runic inscriptions from the same period. The project pursues three aims: 1) Mapping the evolving production of inscriptions in different languages and alphabets through geospatial analyses and making the vast corpus of Latin-alphabet inscriptions publicly and digitally available for the first time; 2) Developing a holistic methodology for studying Scandinavian epigraphy, focusing on the intersections of textual, orthographic, palaeographic, and visual practices of epigraphic traditions in different languages and scripts, uniting previously compartmentalized disciplines of runic, Old Norse, and Latin studies; 3) Proposing a new explanatory model for the use of Latin and the vernacular, reinterpreting their relationship within a sociolinguistic and social semiotic framework to understand the sociocultural premises and implications of evolving language and script choices.

Mots-clés : epigraphy medieval scandinavia runic inscriptions medieval latin historical sociolinguistics historical multilingualism latin inscriptions latinization
Projet ERC : flEAP (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Université de Trente — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1486161.0 €

While mechatronic solutions become increasingly pervasive, there are areas, such as the space or the ocean depths, that are still difficult to reach and exploit through conventional technologies. Yet, such areas represent an immense source of materials and energy. A bottleneck is represented by actuation/generation technologies, which struggle in unconventional environments. Electrostatic drives based on electroactive polymers (EAPs) have long been regarded as a potentially game-changing solution, as they rely on lightweight materials and feature no rigid moving parts, but their applicability has been severely hindered by reliability and performance limitations. Recently, fluid-gap transducers (FGTs), which leverage combinations of dielectric polymers and liquids, have emerged as a breakthrough, as they have shown potential for reaching significantly improved performance and lifetime. With this project, we will push FGTs beyond their limits, making them able to operate in low pressure atmospheres for space applications, or underwater and at high pressures for application in the marine environment. To achieve these goals, we will 1) expand base knowledge on the working principle of FGTs, 2) develop new operating principle concepts based on highly unconventional material combinations, enabled by our recent findings, such as low-pressure air/vacuum dielectric gaps, or high-permittivity mildly-conductive “leaky” dielectric liquids, 3) provide proof of concept and validation of such new paradigms in a number of relevant scenarios, including FGT-driven robotic systems able to operate in vacuum (for space applications) or underwater/at high pressure, and scaled prototypes of distributed energy harvesters from sea waves. This project will mark a leap in the field of electromechanical drives and allow mechatronic devices to reach frontiers that are unthinkable with conventional technology.

Mots-clés : electroactive polymers,dielectric fluids,hasel,space applications,wave energy
Projet ERC : FINALphagy (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Cell Biology, Development, Stem Cells and R egeneration
Entité participante : Université d'Oslo — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UiO
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 994895.0 €

When an organism experiences physiological stresses, such as nutrient starvation, it activates several mechanisms to promote its survival. One of these mechanisms is autophagy, which is a catabolic pathway conserved from yeast to man that functions as a recycling system during normal physiology, and which helps provide nutrients to sustain essential cellular processes during starvation. Although autophagy is an intensively studied process that plays a major role both in normal development and in a wide variety of diseases, several important aspects of autophagy remain to be elucidated. For instance, whereas the vast majority of studies have focused on how cells regulate the activation of autophagy, it remains largely unknown how cells and organisms shut off autophagy in response to returning nutrient availability. The limited knowledge of autophagy termination is partly due to a lack of available tools and appropriate methods. Addressing these challenges will not only provide important insight in this fundamental aspect of the autophagic process, but may potentially also identify new targets for development of drugs to manipulate this phase of autophagy. In FINALphagy I will develop new genetic and computational tools to quantify and manipulate the temporal dynamics of autophagy in an entire organism. I will unravel key mechanism of autophagy termination in individual cells within a tissue and dissect how this connects to systemic signaling and behavioral changes. This will generate a comprehensive toolbox for time- and space-resolved manipulation and quantification of autophagy levels, produce a whole-organism map of autophagy responses at the tissue-level, and conceptualize our understanding of the dynamics of autophagy regulation in an entire organism during changing nutrient levels.

Mots-clés : autophagy,drosophila,in vivo imaging,machine learning,metabolism,systemic signaling,mathematical modeling
Projet ERC : COORDINATE (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Université d'Oslo — Pays : Norvège — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UiO
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

COORDINATE will do political psychology with infants to reveal meaningful mechanisms for coordinating resource distribution so basic that they manifest even in the preverbal mind. The distribution of resources, help, territory and priority decision rights are central dilemmas for group-living species and the core of politics. Navigating these dilemmas, young children must discover the structure of their social world: who is friend or foe, superior or subordinate, and what does this mean for how people interact? To solve this learnability problem, I argue that early- and reliably-developing core representations and motives have evolved for navigating basic kinds of social relationships with critical adaptive value. Consistent with this theoretical proposal, I discovered that preverbal human infants mentally represent social dominance and, like other animals, use relative size to predict the outcome of zero-sum conflict, spawning a new field of research (Thomsen et al, 2011, Science). However, human society is also defined by reciprocity and by distributing resources according to need, effort and prior possession, yet it remains unknown if these coordination mechanism are inscribed already in the preverbal mind. Here, we test the high-risk proposals that 1) preverbal infants expect direct reciprocity to govern resource donations; 2) infants and preschoolers use gratitude to predict the future reciprocal altruism of others; 3) infants also use asymmetries of prior possession, hunger need and relative effort to predict who will prevail in resource conflict; 4) that beyond the dyadic and triadic relationships typically studied in the field, preschoolers and preverbal infants use the abstract structural forms of pyramidal hierarchy, clique and lines to represent the group relationships of social hierarchy, communality and equality, respectively. These mechanisms likely operate intuitively across life and so we will test if they undergird political ideology and -psychology

Mots-clés : social psychology,naive sociology,political psychology,moral psychology,evolutionary psychology and cultural evolution,core cognition,relational representations and motives,reciprocal altruism,gratitude,ownership,image schemas,structural forms
Projet ERC : HYQUAKE (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : Université de Rome « La Sapienza » — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1462710.0 €

Earthquakes and tectonic fault slip are among the most hazardous and unpredictable natural phenomena. Fluids play a key role in tectonic faulting and recent research suggests that fluids are central in both human induced seismicity and the mode of fault slip, ranging from episodic tremor and slip to slow earthquakes. However, the lack of accessibility to earthquake faults and the complexity of physical processes has limited our ability to develop holistic models for hydromechanical coupling in fault zones. Geophysical observations have the potential for illuminating precursors to failure for the spectrum of tectonic faulting, however we lack key laboratory data to connect these observations with predictive, physics-based models. The ambitious goal of HYQUAKE is to build a physically based framework to understand and predict fluid pressure induced fault slip for a range of fault motion, from aseismic creep to destructive earthquakes. The HYQUAKE approach is interdisciplinary and at the frontier of laboratory earthquake physics, seismology and data/computer science, with the goal of providing unprecedented quantitative constraints on the key physical processes that couple fault friction, the dynamics of strain localization and fluid flow controlling earthquakes and fault slip behavior. Specifically, I will build a research program around unusually well controlled rock deformation experiments tightly connected to numerical models of faulting. HYQUAKE will integrate lab data on fault zone elastic properties, frictional rheology, and hydromechanical parameters using state-of-the-art experimental equipment built within the project with machine learning to forecast labquake. Details of deformation processes, fluid flow, and fault failure will be imaged using novel acoustic techniques. These data will set the stage for the upscaling of laboratory observations to the prediction of natural faulting by coupling physics-based machine learning with 3D hydro-mechanical models.

Mots-clés : frictional stability,rock mechanics,machine learning,acoustic imaging,hydromechanical modeling
Projet ERC : TROPIC (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed Matter Physics
Entité participante : Institute of Science and Technology Austria — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : ISTA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2324880.0 €

TROPIC will design new experiments to uncover the topological properties of quantum materials that will revolutionize quantum computing. Conventional approaches that rely on local interactions between qubits suffer from seemingly insurmountable problems, such as controlling quantum decoherence while still achieving a useful number of qubits.  Alternative approaches based on nonlocal topological excitations, such as Majorana fermions, could provide a solution but clear evidence for their existence is missing. TROPIC aims to identify topological signatures of quantum spin liquids and superconductors by revolutionizing a technique—resonant torsion magnetometry—that was recently developed by the PI. Our approach is unique in its extreme sensitivity to materials properties that are notoriously concealed.  This proposal consists of three aims that focus on systems with promising hints of topology: the quantum spin liquid RuCl3 and the spin triplet superconductor UTe2. Each aim requires significant advances that will allow us to access the magnetotropic coefficient—the thermodynamic coefficient associated with magnetic anisotropy—in new classes of materials for the first time (aim 2) while obtaining new information (aim 3).  The aims are summarized as: 1. Refining resonant torsion to identify topological order associated with Majorana fermions in RuCl3. 2. Extending resonant torsion to high magnetic fields to investigate unconventional superconductivity in UTe2. 3. Developing resonant torsion to higher frequencies to search for slow topological excitations.  Recent media articles by quantum computing pioneers have warned that the hype is surpassing the performance. A material revolution is needed to realize the promise of quantum computing. We will develop a new experimental probes that will be applicable to broad classes of topological materials, including small and fragile 2D systems and heterostructures where thermodynamic measurements are needed.