Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : REPRO-SCAPES (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Entité participante : Université de Calgary — Pays : Canada — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UCalgary
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 217500.0 €

The global assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) market is expected to reach USD 45 billion by 2025 with more than 8 million babies born. Europe dominates the market followed by North-America and Asia. However more than half of European states and most countries in the Americas and Asia prohibit access to ARTs to solo individuals, same-sex couples and heterosexual couples who need donated eggs, embryos or surrogacy. It is a prime example of contemporary technological transnationalism with potential parents pursuing treatment abroad in the hopes of conception. As ARTs spread to populations that have not had access to them before, how is reproduction being transformed by technologies and individuals whose sexual and reproductive lives may defy social norms and national laws? Due to biotechnologies and the populations who seek ARTs a new theoretical framework for cross-border reproductive care is necessary. The overarching aim is to study the question of ARTs, new family-forms and transnationalism in three ways: Firstly by exploring how the transnational circulations of ARTs, bodily material and ideas take form in three continents: Europe, North-America and the Middle-East (multi-sited ethnography). The second is through the ethnographic approach of analysis of specific locations, examining how technologies, genetic flow and ideas come to settle in four countries, leaders in ARTs and sexual and reproductive health rights (single-site ethnographies): Spain, Denmark, Canada and Israel. Thirdly, by studying the complexity and intersection of the biological, social, politico-legal and ideological between new family-forms and ARTs, and how these intersections shape their experiences. I am uniquely positioned to implement this study due to my pioneering scholarship on ARTs and new family-forms from a strong interdisciplinary stance and solid experience of managing international teams, bringing together divergent empirical contexts for ground-breaking research.

Mots-clés : assisted reproductive technologies,new family forms,transnationalism,spain,denmark,canada,israel
Projet ERC : InnoChem (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Université de Fribourg-en-Brisgau — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2498750.0 €

The elementary steps underlying the reversible addition and removal of electrons from matter M –Metals, Molecules or Materials– are the fundament to describe redox chemistry, electrocatalysis and electrochemical energy storage. However, the electrochemical potentials of reaction partners are only comparable within one solvent. This is a consequence of the solvent specific standard states.  For this reason, it is a Grand Challenge to establish a Unified Redox Scale to compare electrochemical potentials in all media without extra-thermodynamic assumptions. To achieve this, we use an ‘ideal’ Ionic Liquid Salt Bridge setup to measure the Gibbs transfer energies between different solvents. The measured values, corrected for residual liquid junction potential contributions, will be used to directly connect potentials to the aqueous scale. This unifying solvent-independent scale will allow for knowledge-based comparison and selection of reagents for redox reactions in the next sections.  Reagents for deelectronation (removal of an e–) at high potential are scarcely available. Hence, we prepare perhalogenated radical cation salts that act as innocent Deelectronators (iD+) with high unified redox potentials. An iD+ converts a given neutral M to the ‘naked’ cation M+. iD+-salts are straightforwardly accessible and room-temperature stable materials. Conveniently, they are in part weighable in air. Combined with suitable non-reactive, weakly coordinating but polar innocent solvents and robust weakly coordinating anions, reactive cation salts are accessible.  Such reversible iD+-mediated redox-processes at high potential are appealing for electrosynthesis and -catalysis. To generate, study and apply these systems, we introduce a generally applicable innocent solvent family compatible with the high potential of iD+ and M+ – also with commercially available anions. Suitable iD+/solvent couples for targeted reactions are selected based on their position on the unified redox scale.

Mots-clés : electrochemistry,synthesis,solution chemistry,redox reagents,carbocation,gas phase cation
Projet ERC : HEART2BEAT (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : Université de Twente — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the cause of the highest mortality and morbidity rates worldwide and are expected to increase in coming years, leading to epidemic proportions. Traditional experimental in vitro and animal models are not predictive enough, which hampers the emergence of novel therapies for treatment of CVD. Consequently, there is an urgent need to establish realistic human models that lead to a better understanding of CVD, providing the opportunity to identify and validate druggable targets. In Heart2Beat I will develop innovative human heart models for mimicking cardiovascular disease. I will use an innovative in-air microfluidic platform for ultra-high throughput encapsulating of human pluripotent stem cells in microgels to generate self-organised multicellular 3D human cardiac organoids that replicate the architectural design of the human heart. Furthermore, I will integrate and develop innovative technologies from the fields of human stem cell biology and engineering to create 3D (micro)-engineered heart tissues, coupled to a versatile and automated microfluidic platform, enabling assessment of multifunctional analysis (e.g., contraction, relaxation, metabolism, morphology). Finally, I will build a functional human mini-heart with the capacity to pump fluid, the main function of the human heart and then assess clinically relevant readouts in healthy and diseased conditions. These first-of-its kind advanced 3D human cardiac models and platforms are complementary to each other and form a highly innovative and comprehensive pipeline for modelling human CVD, enabling (ultra)high throughput screening and in-depth multifunctional pre-clinical analysis of healthy and diseased heart tissues. Successful implementation of Heart2Beat will provide insight into mechanisms of disease and will initiate a paradigm shift for personalised medicine and drug discovery, leading to tailor-made therapy for patients suffering from CVD.

Mots-clés : human pluripotent stem cells,cardiac disease,organ on chip,microfluidics,disease modelling,drug discovery
Projet ERC : Breaking Bad (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and I mmunotherapy
Entité participante : Université technique de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2373592.0 €

Failure of thymic tolerance may result in severe autoimmune diseases that target the central nervous system (CNS), including Multiple Sclerosis (MS), Myelin Oligodendrocyte Glycoprotein (MOG)-associated Disease (MOGAD), and Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorders (NMOSD). Recently, we discovered a new layer of thymic tolerance in that thymic B cells get licensed to present activation-induced autoantigens, among them AQP4 (the target antigen in NMOSD). Thymic B cells are necessary and sufficient to purge the T cell repertoire of AQP4-specific clones.  In BREAKING BAD, we will investigate in depth how thymic B cells shape the AQP4-specific T cell repertoire by either deleting AQP4-specific conventional T cells or agonist-selecting Foxp3+ Treg cells. To understand B cell-intrinsic and extrinsic checkpoints of this process, we will use genetic means to disrupt thymic tolerance to AQP4. Since we have cloned a variety of AQP4-specific TCRs, we are now in the position to track fate decisions and functional phenotypes of naïve T cells that react against AQP4, which is – in contrast to MOG – not only expressed in the CNS but also in peripheral organs. Finally, our data indicate that amyloid precursor protein (APP), associated with cerebral amyloid angiopathy and Alzheimer's disease, is an autoantigen that is – very similar to AQP4 – induced in B cells upon CD40 stimulation and expressed in thymic B cells. Therefore, we will investigate the APP-specific T cell repertoire and its ability to provide T cell help for the generation of anti-amyloid Abeta antibodies upon disruption of B cell-mediated tolerance to Abeta peptides by conditional genetic ablation of APP in B cells.  In summary, BREAKING BAD will explore the significance of B cell-mediated tolerance for CNS autoantigens. We anticipate that our experiments will revolutionize the understanding and perhaps potential treatment options of CNS autoimmunity but also of major degenerative disorders like Alzheimer's disease.

Mots-clés : central tolerance,cns autoimmunity,negative selection,t cell receptor,t follicular helper cell
Projet ERC : HeartCORE (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Conseil national de la recherche — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : CNR
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1819650.0 €

Remodelling processes associated with genetic and non-genetic cardiac diseases can cause electrical conduction disturbances and arrhythmias. Current models used to predict functional alterations due to structural remodelling fail to accurately assess arrhythmogenic risk, mainly because they do not draw upon comprehensive functional and structural data and are typically based on low-resolution and non-integrated information. Here, I present HeartCORE, an interdisciplinary approach designed to establish a mechanistic relationship between electrophysiological dysfunction and structural alterations in an animal model that mimics human cardiac electrophysiology. Langendorff-perfused rabbit hearts will first be electrically characterized in terms of conduction, repolarization properties, and arrhythmogenicity using a dual-wavelength panoramic optical mapping system that includes the transmural dimension. The hearts will then be transformed into well-preserved, fully transparent organs and imaged with a high-throughput light sheet mesoscope to reconstruct cardiac muscle organization and collagen deposits with micrometric resolution. Selected high-resolution immunohistochemistry images will be integrated with the structural data of each organ to develop a computational model of cardiac electrical activity and explore the possibility of reproducing in silico experimentally observed electrical behaviour. This methodology will be applied to investigate the impact of cardiac remodelling (including non-myocyte reorganization) on conduction disturbances and arrhythmogenesis in two distinct scenarios: generalized interstitial fibrosis in congenital hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and localized scarring in acquired myocardial infarction. HeartCORE aims to create a unifying model that integrates functional and structural data, enabling a comprehensive investigation of the morphological causes leading to electrical alterations and enhancing predictive concepts in arrhythmogenesis.

Mots-clés : cardiac electrophysiology arrhythmia cardiac fibrosis optical mapping mesoscopic imaging advanced microscopy computational cardiac electrophysiology
Projet ERC : PhylFun (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
Entité participante : Université de Tartu — Pays : Estonie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 3305750.0 €

The kingdom Fungi comprises >150,000 currently recognised species distributed across 80 classes in 20 phyla. Total species numbers are estimated at 2-3 million and our preliminary eDNA analyses suggest at least double numbers of higher-ranking taxa. However, current nomenclatural regulations fall short in DNA-based taxonomic descriptions. PhylFun aims to develop the concept and methodology for DNA-based phylogenetic classification of organisms, using fungi as examples, for an improved taxon communication and classification framework. My team will use cutting-edge methods of single-cell analysis, genomics and taxonomy for analysing our global collection of samples for DNA/sequence-based classification and providing a detailed higher-level fungal classification. We will generate large amounts of high-quality long-read DNA sequence data and create a bioinformatics platform for data management (WP1) that will be combined with the developed DNA-based classification framework (WP2) to produce an updated phylogenetic classification for fungi and potentially other microeukaryotes (WP3). PhylFun is expected to greatly benefit researchers and the public by communicating the taxa of fungi and other eukaryotic microorganisms, allowing us to consider them in conservation assessments and quarantine. The project is of a high-risk high-gain (HRHG) nature because of multiple novel methodological aspects and addressing one of the greatest gaps in taxonomy and classification related to rapid technological advances, whereas the proposed amendments for using DNA/sequence characters as types or in descriptions/diagnoses may be voted down by morphotaxonomists. Nonetheless, the potential benefits for the entire taxonomic and research community can be enormous by finally anchoring the “dark matter” fungi and other microeukaryotic organisms via providing valid names, a position in the classification system, insights into potential ecophysiological functions and conservation requirements.

Mots-clés : fungi,taxonomy
Projet ERC : COPS (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed Matter Physics
Entité participante : KTH Institut royal de technologie — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2974000.0 €

High temperature superconductivity and other unconventional types of superconductivity, such as topological superconductivity, are central topics in contemporary physics. At the heart of superconductivity lie the pairs of electrons, Cooper pairs, that are formed and condense into a superfluid state below a critical temperature Tc. An outstanding problem is the mechanism that underlies the electron-pairing in unconventional superconductors. Here this problem is addressed by developing a new experimental technique, based on the simultaneous photoemission of both electrons in a Cooper pair by a single photon. Cooper-pair spectroscopy was theorized 20 years ago but has so far never been achieved experimentally. Through numerical simulations it is shown, in this proposal, that using the latest advances in light source technology and electron detection techniques together with software filtering based on the unique properties of Cooper pairs, Cooper-pair spectroscopy can become a reality. Cooper-pair spectroscopy would allow for the direct detection of the building blocks of superconductivity and would thus unequivocally demonstrate the presence of such pairs even in the absence of phase coherence, which is necessary for hall mark effects such as zero resistance or the Meissner effect. Cooper-pair spectroscopy will thus be able to confirm or rule out the existence of preformed pairs above Tc in high-temperature superconductors or in the so called pseudogap phase. Cooper-pair spectroscopy will also permit the measurement of the momentum of Cooper pairs thus allowing for the test of various theories for the superconducting and pseudogap phases of unconventional superconductors. Furthermore, Cooper-pair spectroscopy will allow for the characterization of topological superconductivity as well as the phase transition between topological and non-topological superconducting states. In short, Cooper-pair spectroscopy will open a new window into the world of superconductivity.

Mots-clés : superconductivity,photoelectron spectroscopy,cooper pairs,cuprates,pnictides
Projet ERC : SCLIT (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Université polytechnique de Catalogne — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1523391.25 €

Shannon’s 1948 paper established the mathematical foundations of digital compression and transmission and paved the way for the information age. A notion embedded in Shannon’s and most work in Information Theory is the concept of rate, defined as the exponential growth rate of the number of messages. The probabilistic law governing general information processing systems may be such that the optimal number of messages does not scale exponentially with the length of the sequences. The vast majority of the Information Theory literature assumes an exponential number of messages and thus, ignores the rich amount of possible scaling functions in important settings. When the system probability law is such that the optimal rate scaling is not exponential, standard techniques cannot be applied and new techniques must be sought. A fundamental understanding of the impact of general scaling laws is crucial to harvesting the potential gains in practical system design. This project is aimed at contributing towards the ambitious goal of providing a unified framework for the study of Information Theory with arbitrary scaling laws. The unified framework will be based on information spectrum and concentration techniques will also consider the penalties incurred by sub-optimal decoding for systems described by general probabilistic laws. The project will also provide coding solutions that approach the theoretical limits. This unconventional and challenging treatment of Information Theory will advance the area and will contribute to Information Sciences and Systems disciplines where Information Theory is relevant. A comprehensive study of the fundamental limits and optimal code design with general scaling laws will represent a major step forward in the field, with the potential to provide new tools and techniques to solve open problems in close disciplines.

Mots-clés : information theory,data transmission,digital communications,coding theory,data compression
Projet ERC : InnovaLEC (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Materials Engineering
Entité participante : Université d'Umeå — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

Artificial illumination is fundamental and ubiquitous in modern society, and the cuArtificial illumination is fundamental and ubiquitous in modern society, and the current large-scale commercialization of more efficient and practical technologies, in the form of LEDs and OLEDs, is therefore important. This development is not only resulting in improved luminaires and displays, but also paving the way for a wide range of applications in, e.g., medtech, security, and communication. However, a growing concern is related to that the fabrication of LEDs and OLEDs consumes large amounts of critical raw materials (CRMs) and energy, and that their recycling is poorly developed and difficult.  A novel illumination technology, the light-emitting electrochemical cell (LEC), is in this context interesting, and we and others have recently developed concepts for its material- and energy-efficient and CRM-free printing fabrication and its delivery of efficient emission (although not yet on par with LED/OLED). These combined achievements now pave the way for a timely and important challenge: can the LEC become the first emissive technology that is truly sustainable through its entire lifecycle?  We boldly argue that this vision can turn true if we can take control of the defining LEC feature, viz. the dynamic formation of a p-n junction by electrochemical doping. It was recently shown that current LECs suffer from severe quenching of the excitons (the photon precursors formed in the p-n junction) by too-nearby dopants, and we here introduce new insights and methodologies that address this setback through rational design and careful development of new materials. A key task is to tune the mobility of the electronic charge carriers and excitons, through guidelines established by modeling, for the attainment of a sharp p-n junction boundary. We emphasize that our proposed path to high-efficiency LECs does not depend on energy-intense processes or the use of toxic or CRM-based materials.

Mots-clés : understanding and controlling dynamic doping high efficiency light emission by designed dynamic doping structures truly sustainable illumination devices from cradle to grave
Projet ERC : HYDRANOS (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
Entité participante : Université de technologie de Darmstadt — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2485281.0 €

Today's computing systems are facing an unprecedented security threat posed by recent attacks that use software to exploit hardware vulnerabilities, as shown by attacks like Spectre, Meltdown, Foreshadow, and follow-ups - affecting a wide range of computing platforms and manufacturers, including Intel, AMD, and ARM. These cross-layer attacks reach far beyond exploiting microarchitectural vulnerabilities and allow unprivileged software to exploit a variety of hardware design and implementation flaws, as we demonstrated in the world's largest System-on-Chip (SoC) security competition that we have been conducting with Intel since 2018. This adversarial paradigm shift sidesteps decades of security research that assumed a layered architecture where hardware is flawless and trustworthy. Existing solutions, such as software patching or specific hardware changes are ad-hoc, expensive, or only mitigate specific known attacks. Particularly, patching hardware after fabrication is very limited or impossible.  This proposal, HYDRANOS, envisions hardware-assisted adaptive security, a radically different approach to enable flexible security for future computing systems. We aim to design, prototype, and evaluate dedicated configurable hardware inside the SoC design to enable post-fabrication reconfiguration of key security-relevant hardware primitives to mitigate new attack vectors. Moreover, we provide an evaluation framework that includes novel hardware fuzzing techniques to significantly improve existing hardware-vulnerability detection methods at design time.  HYDRANOS is a game changer for trustworthy computing, allows to fundamentally and flexibly tackle today’s and future cross-layer attacks on security-critical systems, and provides novel research to pave the way towards future-proof security. We will showcase our results on open-source hardware widely supported by academia and industry and provide it to the research community, allowing open verification by third-parties.

Mots-clés : system security,open source hardware,hardware assisted security,security vulnerability,hardware security analysis,system security analysis