Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : VenusVolAtmos (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe Sciences
Entité participante : Université de technologie de Delft — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TU Delft
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2156250.0 €

Venus is similar to Earth in terms of density, size and composition. Yet both bodies evolved so dramatically different that Venus now has an uninhabitable, run-away greenhouse atmosphere in contrast to Earth ́s favourable habitable conditions. Despite alarming parallels with CO2-driven global warming on Earth, the origin and evolution of Venus ́ run-away greenhouse atmosphere remains poorly understood. Problematically, current models fail to incorporate the important effects of volcanic degassing and atmosphere-surface interaction throughout Venus ́ history. Due to Venus’ CO2-rich atmosphere, surface pressures are 90 times greater than on Earth. Volcanoes on Venus will degas under very different conditions, yielding different volcanic gas compositions and gas fluxes to the atmosphere. Constraints on volatility and the contribution of magmatic volatiles to the composition of Venus ́ atmosphere are pivotal for understanding the extent and timing of volcanic activity on Venus, especially in light of upcoming Venus exploration missions. Interaction between Venus’ atmosphere, volcanic gasses and surface likely plays a key role in determining volatile fluxes but is poorly understood at conditions relevant for Venus’ surface. The critical lack of such challenging experiments precludes a detailed assessment of the Venusian volatile cycle and atmospheric evolution. I will quantify the past and current interior-to-atmosphere volatile element flux on Venus. In a highly multi-disciplinary approach I will perform 1) pioneering, high P-T experiments mimicking magma degassing on Venus and atmosphere-gas-rock interactions, 2) using state-of-the-art (in situ) analyses of gas speciation and reaction rates and 3) integrate these results in numerical models to obtain quantitative volatile fluxes for Venus. This work allows for rigorous re-assessment of Venus’ interior and atmospheric evolution and will provide a solid framework for future exploration of Venus.

Mots-clés : greenhouse,atmosphere,venus,early earth,exoplanets
Projet ERC : Nerve-Repair2.0 (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Université de technologie de Delft — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TU Delft
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1672968.0 €

In this project, I will develop biodegradable MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) implants for nerve repair, a new class of microsystems made entirely of biodegradable materials, including sensors, actuators, and electronics.  These wireless implants will focus on the mechanical stretching of peripheral nerves in vivo for neural regeneration after injury. Two strategies will be explored, compared, and combined: 1) cyclic mechanical nerve stimulation with NerveCyclicStretch, a soft biodegradable magnetic implant controlled by wireless magnetic actuation with an integrated strain sensor, and 2) constant mechanical traction with NerveSuctionStretch, a biodegradable implant applying negative pressure to the injured nerve with a biodegradable MEMS micropump and with an integrated pressure sensor. New biodegradable stretchable magnetic and conducting materials will be developed for this purpose, and in vivo studies on the sciatic nerve of rat models will be performed to demonstrate the proper operation of the implants and to identify the optimal mechanical stimulation parameters for nerve repair.  The development of new functional biodegradable materials (with tailored magnetic, electrical, and mechanical properties) and cleanroom-compatible fabrication processes (thin films deposition, photolithography, etching of biodegradable metals and polymer composites) will enable the realization of fully biodegradable microsystems while retaining the established advantages of MEMS (small size, high precision, fast response time, low energy consumption, reliable large-scale production).  This proposal is a paradigm shift in the design of medical devices, with biodegradable implants allowing for the first time the in vivo exploration of a promising new therapeutic approach. Beyond neurosciences, Nerve-Repair2.0 will pave the way for many other medical applications including cardiac diseases, addressing crucial societal challenges that could not be solved otherwise.

Mots-clés : biodegradable electronics,medical implants
Projet ERC : RIPLEY (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Université de technologie de Delft — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TU Delft
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

RIPLEY will pioneer the next generation of soft robots, empowering them for the first time to establish, maintain, and exploit multiple large-area contacts. Imagine assessing and fixing damages deep into a huge turbine without disassembling it. Today, this task is impossible. Five years from now, RIPLEY's intelligent soft robots will be capable of squeezing themselves into a narrow opening and reaching deep into the mechanical structure - like an octopus elegantly finding its way through a complex riff, embracing the rocks with its whole body to reach for a pray.  These pragmatic outcomes will require a paradigm shift in the theory of soft robotic intelligence. Indeed, while on the one hand, soft robots are becoming increasingly capable of moving in free space, at the same, they fall short whenever simple environment-robot interactions arise. Critically, this limitation is the symptom of flows in the foundations of existing theories, and research in the field finds itself in a cul-de-sac from which it cannot get out by accumulating incremental steps.  RIPLEY will solve this impasse by rebuilding soft robotic intelligence from the ground up. A new class of dynamical systems stays at the core of this disruptive innovation, driven by two key enablers: control-oriented descriptions of large-area interactions and contact-aware shape parametrizations. With this mathematical framework, I will define entirely new perception and control challenges - estimation and regulation of shape, pressure, and contact areas - to which I will provide provably reliable closed-form solutions grounded in control theory.  With my fundamental contributions, I have already reshaped the understanding and application of soft robots' motor intelligence. With my experience, I will steer RIPLEY to transform soft machines again by bringing interaction-centric robots to life, unlocking applications from inspection to agriculture to healthcare.

Mots-clés : soft robotics,control of soft robots,control of mechanical systems
Projet ERC : PolMig (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Entité participante : Arnold-bergstraesser institut fur kulturwissenschaftliche forschung ev — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499278.75 €

Refugees and other migrants continue to arrive in new places all across the world. Their reception, long-term prospects and lives in their new homes remains one of the most pressing socio-political issues of our times. What about the migrant in all of this? How do they see their life, role and political agency? Migration research has thus far under-conceptualised and under-researched political migrant agency, especially from a Global South perspective and in interaction with states and non-state actors. PolMig aims to redress this gap and combine it with a commitment to tackle global inequalities in knowledge production.  Focusing on Africa, PolMig considers how migrants define political agency, enabled or disabled by politicisation processes of belonging in postcolonial state contexts. Drawing on this research, PolMig advances an Afrocentric understanding of political migrant agency with global relevance. The research will consider the effects of different migrant trajectories (refugee or other migrant; transregional or intraregional; in country of destination, transit or return to origin) on the self-defined understanding of political agency, along intersectional principles of gender, class and race. PolMig uses pioneering research methods to do so including migrant agency diaries and theatre workshops.  PolMig bridges the literature on migrant agency and migration states as well as contributing an Afrocentric perspective to the field. The Afrocentric perspective is ensured through a process of collaboration and exchange, centring the continent empirically and epistemologically. The innovative project will have significant scientific impact through addressing an interdisciplinary research gap and the commitment to highlighting and tackling knowledge inequalities. It also offers highly relevant policy contributions to an urgent societal question.

Mots-clés : agency,global south,knowledge production,political belonging
Projet ERC : Diversity Outside In (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and Processes Engineering
Entité participante : Université de technologie de Delft — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : TU Delft
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1961917.0 €

Musculoskeletal disorders, affecting muscles, bones, joints, and associated tissues, are the leading cause of disability worldwide today. To guide professionals in preventing and treating musculoskeletal disorders, musculoskeletal models serve as powerful tools. Given that these disorders present differently between sexes and throughout the lifespan, it is crucial to include model parameters that reflect this diversity. However, while it is widely recognized in medicine and science that women and men are not simply scaled versions of one another, the field of biomechanics still relies on linear scaling of musculoskeletal models based on male bone geometry and mixed-sex muscle parameters. Datasets or models capturing the relationship of model parameters across sex, age, and genetic background are lacking, leading to incorrect personalized models. I propose to develop an innovative methodology for rapidly generating accurate, personalized musculoskeletal models that account for age and sex-specific variations. To this end, I will pioneer a highly challenging and unique experimental setup and collect data that spans both demographic factors and multiple levels of model parameters from in-vivo measurements in a population study. With this, I will develop the first musculoskeletal models in which age and sex differences are accurately represented. I propose a morphometric scaling technique, which is a novel approach, integrating full-body shape data with demographic information, to enable rapid and accessible generation of these accurate personalized models. This will set a new standard for both practical applications and research settings. Finally, these models will be used in simulations to explore how age- and sex-related differences impact musculoskeletal loading during movement. Understanding how age-sex differences affect movement and musculoskeletal loading, will guide the design of equitable rehabilitation, physical labour, prevention, and performance program.

Mots-clés : biomechanics
Projet ERC : RADIANCE (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Inserm
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1948125.0 €

More than 50% of cancer patients undergo radiation therapy (RT) in the course of their treatment. However, because of a lack of specificity for tumor tissues, delivering therapeutically effective doses of X rays with tolerable toxicity on healthy tissues remains a challenge. Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the most common primary brain cancer in adults has a dismal prognosis despite an aggressive standard-of-care. Developing new strategies to improve the therapeutic index of RT is therefore of major importance. The aim of this project is to comprehensively study the multifaceted radiotherapeutic effect of nanoscintillators (NS), and determine how to harness these effects to improve the therapeutic index of RT. By converting high-energy photons such as X-rays into UV/visible photons, NS can augment RT by various effects. These include radiation dose enhancement, radioluminescence-induced photodynamic therapy and DNA damage generated by UV-radioluminescence. This project has three main objectives: 1) To elucidate the physical and photochemical origins of the radiotherapeutic effects of NS using spectroscopic studies to identify the reactive oxygen species and DNA lesions generated upon X-rays; 2) To study the biological impact of the NS on 3D models and in syngeneic rat models of GBM; 3) To develop an in silico program that simulates the efficacy of prospective NS, and studies the impact of their composition, size and morphology. This will tailor future NS to specific malignancies with distinct biological properties. With this innovative methodology and an interdisciplinary approach that ranges from physics to biology, this project will provide ground-breaking fundamental knowledge on the radiotherapeutic effects of NS that may lead to highly valuable and clinically translatable therapies. In the long-term, this strategy may be tailored for pancreatic and metastatic ovarian cancers, for which the multifaceted enhancement of RT efficacy by NS may be of great interest.

Mots-clés : nanoscintillators,radiotherapy,photodynamic therapy,radiation dose enhancement,glioblastoma
Projet ERC : LEAP (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Entité participante : Centre hospitalier universitaire Grenoble-Alpes — Pays : France — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : CHU Grenoble Alpes
Type d'entité : Organismes publics (hors enseignement & recherche)
Financement ERC de l'entité : 95217.5 €

How we consciously experience the world remains a mystery in science. To tackle this problem, scientific works on perceptual consciousness contrast brain activity when participants consciously perceive a stimulus versus when they are unaware of it. To report stimulus awareness, participants need to make decisions. However, the extent to which the well-studied mechanisms of decision-making apply to consciousness is unclear. One possible reason is that standard neuroimaging methods lack the sensitivity to observe whether the mechanisms of decision-making also operate in the absence of task relevance, as when participants become conscious of a stimulus irrespective of any task. In this project, I will test the hypothesis that a mechanism of decision-making –evidence accumulation– explains how perceptual consciousness unfolds over time. First, I will develop a computational model of a latent evidence accumulation process (LEAP) and test it on behavioral measures of phenomenal aspects of perceptual experience: its duration and intensity. Second, I will search for single neuron activity in humans that instantiates evidence accumulation and test whether it also determines these phenomenal aspects of perceptual experience. Third, I will stimulate the corresponding brain regions to disentangle their causal role in either solely triggering perceptual experience or shaping it. Last, I will use the LEAP model to explain hallucinatory-like experiences in patients with Parkinson's disease and test whether deep-brain stimulation affects only decision-making –as previously shown– or also perceptual experience. By combining computational modeling and cutting-edge electrophysiology, the LEAP project will provide unique mechanistic insights on how neuronal activity determines perceptual experience and guides its temporal dynamics. It will also provide a tool to better understand hallucinations, which remain today a major debilitating symptom in numerous psychiatric disorders.

Mots-clés : consciousness,perception,human,electrophysiology,neuron,model
Projet ERC : EpiDetect (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Inserm
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

The detection of circulating tumor DNA allows to non-invasively retrieve tumor molecular profiles and follow disease evolution. These approaches promise optimal and individualized management of patients with cancer. However, despite remarkable progress, several technological obstacles still limit liquid biopsy widespread application. Indeed, detecting small fractions of tumor DNA released when the tumor burden is reduced remains a challenge. Samples collected at early stages or during treatment may contain less than one mutant copy per milliliter of plasma, which is below the detection limit of current technologies. Moreover, detectable recurrent mutations do not cover all patients. It is therefore necessary to develop new, more sensitive, but also more informative tools. My goal is to develop new methods detecting epigenetic markers from peripheral blood for establishing more efficient non-invasive diagnostic tests and disease monitoring. Targeting the cancer epigenome, which contains a myriad of somatic alterations that do not modify the DNA sequence and cover cases without detectable mutations, will achieve increased sensitivity. These markers could become decisive in detecting residual disease and early stages of multiple forms of cancer. I will develop approaches to: 1) Analyze circulating DNA methylation profiles at unique and repeated sequences; 2) Identify circulating DNA cells of origin using nucleosome footprint; 3) Analyze transcripts associated with circulating extracellular vesicles. Ultimately, a single test integrating DNA methylation profiles, fragmentation patterns and EV-associated transcripts, from the same plasma sample, will be developed. This project has both fundamental and biomedical implications: it will generate in-depth knowledge of the biology of circulating non-genetic tumor biomarkers and lead to the development of more efficient non-invasive diagnostic tests adapted to all types of cancers, based on the universality of these factors.

Mots-clés : circulating tumor dna,biomarkers,epigenomics,precision medicine,dna methylation,nucleosomal foot printing,extracellular vesicles,non coding rnas
Projet ERC : SMILE (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe Sciences
Entité participante : Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas — Pays : Grèce — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : FORTH
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1486875.0 €

One of the most compelling mysteries in both cosmology and particle physics is the nature of Dark Matter (DM). We propose to investigate this problem using strong gravitational lensing of active galaxies on the key but poorly-explored milliarcsecond scales. Gravitational lensed images with angular separation on milliarcsecond scales probe gravitational lens systems where the lens is a compact object with mass in the range 10^6 - 10^9 solar masses. This mass range is particularly critical for the widely accepted Lambda-CDM cosmological model, which predicts many more DM sub-halos, i.e., DM halos on sub-galactic scales (masses below ~ 10^11 solar masses), than currently observed. The most direct way to explore these small angular scales is through the high-resolution of radio Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). We propose to use VLBI data on a complete and large sample of active galaxies (~ 5000 sources) to search for gravitational lens systems on milliarcsecond scales. Given that no gravitational lenses on milliarsecond scales have yet been found, if any of the gravitational lens candidates that this search will produce is indeed confirmed as a true gravitational lens system, this would be a first and a major discovery. A null result instead will allow us to infer a new constraint on the abundance of compact objects in the mass range of interest, with over an order of magnitude better precision than in previous studies, and tighter than the number of 10^6 - 10^9 solar masses subhalos predicted by Lambda-CDM. Such a constraint could help discriminate between DM models that predict different numbers of sub-halos in this mass range. It could also help to constrain a possible contribution of primordial black holes as a DM component.

Mots-clés : gravitational lensing strong,techniques interferometric,quasars general,dark matter
Projet ERC : MACAUTH (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas — Pays : Grèce — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : FORTH
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1342050.0 €

The project aims to investigate a little-explored and usually neglected aspect of the Macedonian Question throughout the late nineteenth and most of the twentieth century: namely, the function of the Macedonian Question as a catalyst and a testing ground for the emergence, development and consolidation of authoritarian state policies on a nation-wide scale in all the Balkan nation-states involved. In other words, how the tools used by the rival nation states to extract national loyalty in late Ottoman Macedonia, where nation had been widely conceived first and foremost as a political party, were subsequently transformed into a far broader method of social and political control.  MACAUTH will examine the transfer of particular administrative practices of surveillance, control and political indoctrination, as well as state-sponsored violence and its ideological justification in the name of national expediency, from the initial field of their application in Ottoman and post-Ottoman Macedonia to the mainstream political and social life of Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia/Yugoslavia, as well as to the respective diasporic communities. The impact of the same heritage in Romania, Albania, the Ottoman Empire and its successor nation state, the Turkish Republic, will also be assessed. The research team consists of historians from all five Balkan countries which have been historically involved in the Macedonian conflict (Greece, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania), plus experts on Albania and the Ottoman Empire. It is composed of the PI, nine post-doctoral fellows and senior researchers, two research assistants and two PhD candidates with their supervisors. They will produce a main monograph, at least a thematic collective volume and 20 articles in peer-reviewed journals, two Ph.D. dissertations, three workshops, an international conference, a journalists’ conference for the dissemination of the project’s output and a website.

Mots-clés : macedonian question,balkan history,national identities,political surveillance