Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : ETHME (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, 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 : 1500000.0 €

There are around 55 million deaths in the world each year. How should we evaluate these deaths? Diseases and injuries give rise to both morbidity and mortality. Until the 1950s, epidemiologists were concerned with counting the number of deaths. Since then, evaluative measures concerned with the disvalue of death have grown. In parallel, there has been a debate in analytic philosophy since the 1970s that concerns whether death can harm those who die. The philosophers in this latter debate have not focused on deaths at a population level.  In all societies, the demand for health care exceeds the available resources. However, to prioritize scarce resources in a consistent and meaningful manner, we need reliable health measurements to begin with. In society, we use considerable resources to prevent deaths, and the majority of the global disease burden springs from mortality rather than morbidity. Thus, it is remarkable that so few resources are used to provide theoretically robust death measurements. People's attitudes toward death are naturally ambivalent. On the one hand, death is the worst thing that can happen to us. On the other hand, death is nothing to us. Sophisticated methods have been developed to measure morbidity. Such work remains for mortality.  There have been almost no cross-fertilizations between epidemiology and philosophy regarding mortality measurement. Accordingly, ETHME announces the ethics of mortality measurement as a novel and developing field within the philosophy of epidemiology. The core objectives of ETHME are to (a) develop and refine the understanding of the nature of the harm of death, (b) reconcile the evaluation of deaths in summary measures of population health with the most promising accounts of the harm of death, and (c) develop a theoretical grounding for evaluating procreation in future individuals. One work package will be devoted to each objective (WP1–WP3).
Projet ERC : More4Less (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Université de Grenade — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1498250.0 €

Protons and electrons are the currency of energy conversion and play a key role in some of the most transformative technologies such as the reduction of N2, CO or CO2. Exploiting water and sunlight as renewable resources for these transformations offers a means for solar-to-chemicals conversion. Thus, our ability to control the transfer of protons and electrons preventing the more favourable formation of H2 poses an exciting fundamental problem. Strategies based on proton coupled electron transfer (PCET) have demonstrated key benefits by providing low energy pathways that bypass the most energetic, charged intermediates. However, important problems remain regarding the development of PCET shuttles that: (1) behave as catalysts harnessing water and light, (2) promote multi PCET to avoid unstable radical intermediates that undermine the selectivity and efficiency, and (3) can be integrated in complex multielectron/multiproton transformations relevant to solar energy conversion such as N2 reduction. I will address these problems by designing metal-organic PCET shuttles that target three specific objectives: (1) to merge light and electricity for reductive PCET in a novel photoelectrocatalytic strategy using molecular shuttles that exploit counter oxidation reactions of practical relevance, (2) to achieve an unprecedented control over multi PCET to impact the selectivity of reductive transformations via the colocalization of redox and acid/base sites within coordination cages, and (3) to integrate photo(electro)catalytic PCET in small molecule catalysis with new tandem approaches towards the reduction of N2 using light and water. Overall, these objectives will provide unconventional tools to affect the mechanisms of reductive reactions. Besides transgressing the frontiers of knowledge in the field of PCET, and more generally energy conversion, More4Less has the potential to change the paradigm in which we develop catalytic systems for solar-to-chemical transformation.

Mots-clés : redox catalysis,electrocatalysis,photocatalysis,solar fuels,solar to chemicals,energy conversion,small molecule catalysis,nitrogen reduction,molecular materials
Projet ERC : AMBER (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, 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 : 1499500.0 €

The Anthropocene compels us to question established categories and binaries through which we understand the world and act in it: human and nonhuman, life and nonlife, biological and geological. What we still lack is a theoretical framework, methodological and storytelling tools, to analyse environmental and social concerns alongside geological pasts and futures. AMBER addresses this key challenge by drawing scientific understanding of ecological and geological relations into a global ethnography of the extraction and exchange of a unique, emblematic gemstone. Amber is a fossilised resin secreted by plants between 16 and 300 million years ago; it is found across the planet and is one of the earliest recorded items in long-distance trade. Aside from its ornamental value, amber contains prehistoric organic material – leaves, invertebrates, dinosaur fragments. This has generated intense scientific interest, so amber is now studied in palaeontology and geology laboratories to answer fundamental questions about the planet’s biological evolution and previous phases of mass extinction. This project will be the first in-depth, global study of amber across industry, trade, and science. AMBER breaks new ground by bringing together three dimensions in a common analysis: anthropological frameworks of global circulations; the political ecology of resource extraction; and non-humanist approaches to scientific research and ethics of care beyond the human. Rooted in anthropology, the project considers the multiple and entangled worlds of amber: its extractive economies in the war-torn forests of Kachin state; its scientific study in laboratories in China and Europe; and its wholesale trade in Santo Domingo, Kaliningrad and the Baltic states, and China. The project examines their intersections through collaborative and comparative research and will thus lay the conceptual groundwork for a new geological anthropology for the Anthropocene.

Mots-clés : globalisation extractivism anthropocene extinction geological political ecology global ethnography
Projet ERC : LESYNCH (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Instituto de Telecomunicações — Pays : Portugal — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : IT
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1497145.0 €

Understanding the limits of reliable information transmission over noisy communication channels and designing efficient codes for such channels are major cornerstones of information and coding theory. Most techniques developed in this area in the last 75 years have been targeted at discrete memoryless channels, which have the property that the i-th received symbol is an independent noisy function of the i-th transmitted symbol only. As a result, sender and receiver are synchronized, greatly simplifying their analysis. The study of such channels has given rise to a rich theory with many important applications beyond their original motivation.  The project's goal is to tackle fundamental problems in the theory of information and efficient coding for channels which cause a loss of synchronization between sender and receiver. Besides theoretical interest, these channels capture important properties of modern data storage systems, such as DNA-based data storage. Almost all techniques designed for discrete memoryless channels break down when applied to channels with loss of synchronization. Therefore, studying even the simplest such channels (like the Binary Deletion Channel, which independently deletes each input bit with some probability) requires developing conceptually new techniques. I expect these techniques to have groundbreaking influence in other areas, like the techniques developed for discrete memoryless channels did.  In this project, I aim to characterize the capacity of channels with synchronization errors and to design reliable codes with nearly-optimal rate and efficient encoding and error-correction procedures for these channels. This includes multi-trace channels with synchronization errors (that produce multiple corrupted outputs on a given input) and channels with correlated synchronization errors, both motivated by applications to DNA-based data storage.

Mots-clés : information theory,efficient codes,loss of synchronization,correlated errors,dna based data storage
Projet ERC : E-Nucl (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and Processes Engineering
Entité participante : Université de Rome « La Sapienza » — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499875.0 €

There is a noticeable trend in simulations of fluid processes to try to be as much as possible multiscale, i.e. to carry out simulations from molecular scale to hydrodynamics. This is made possible by the unprecedented capabilities of parallelization, GPUs, and supercomputing in general, which allow in-silico representation of fluids with billions of degrees of freedom. Despite this formidable scientific progress, one crucial aspect still hinders a quantitative description of phase transitions: the way a phase change originates, namely the nucleation process. The elusiveness of this process stems from its strong multiscale nature, involving both atomistic and hydrodynamic scales. More importantly, as nucleation is a rare event, it inherently involves a broad spectrum of time scales, the most ambitious feature to be characterized. It is also clear that the next technological breakthroughs in phase-change-based microtechnology are limited by the inadequate comprehension of phase transitions. As a matter of fact, the fluid dynamic design of frontier microtechnologies is mainly based on empirical ground. Promising two-phase cooling strategies for microelectronics, phase-change-driven micro-robots, synthetic micro-trees, and bio-inspired microstructures for condensation control are typical examples. Meeting these fundamental and technological needs, the objective of E-Nucl is to provide a holistic understanding of phase change processes in fluids which shall describe both the nucleation inception and its coupling with multiphase hydrodynamics. Pursuing this goal, E-Nucl advocates a paradigm shift in fluid modelling by combining innovative rare-event techniques based on Large Deviation Theory with the Diffuse Interface and Fluctuating Hydrodynamics modelling of multiphase flows. This framework could be a game changer in multiphase fluid dynamics and it will allow the first in-silico high-fidelity trials of archetypal microtechnologies.

Mots-clés : nucleation,multiphase flows,diffuse interface,fluctuating hydrodynamics,multiscale,rare events,phase change,thermal science,boiling,condensation,cavitation,bubbles,droplets
Projet ERC : CentroFun (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: B iological  Mechanisms , Structures  and Functions
Entité participante : Université de Rome « La Sapienza » — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

The last decades have seen an extraordinary leap in our knowledge of the human genome and its role in health and disease. Yet, approximately 5% of our DNA still lacks sequence annotation and has been largely excluded from functional and disease-association studies. These genomic gaps include DNA repeats such as centromeres, which are large tandem arrays of alpha-satellite DNA. Centromere’s chromatin is functionally essential for chromosome segregation serving as the basal template for the mitotic kinetochore. A recent breakthrough has been the complete genome assembly, including centromeres, of a haploid cell line derived from fetoplacental growth of a molar pregnancy. However, centromeres sequence and size vary across tissues, between individuals and in disease states. The main challenges are to understand how is centromere variation generated and especially, the consequences at a functional level. The specific objectives of my project are: (1) Identify the mutagenic processes and DNA repair responses operating at centromeres; (2) Determine the impact of centromeres’ sequence variation on chromatin structure, kinetochore function and chromosome behavior; and (3) Understand how these changes contribute to genome instability, cellular phenotypes and disease predisposition. The originality of this project is to follow a multidisciplinary approach that combines experimental studies – spanning structural biochemistry to cell biology – and bioinformatic analyses, that will benefit from the information on centromere reference already available and soon to be generated. The proposed research therefore represents a very appropriate and timely contribution to provide an integrated view of human centromere variation and its role in determining phenotypic traits. Furthermore, it will provide important insight on the functional role of the “missing genome” in human diseases and promises to yield key information and tools for expanding this novel field.
Projet ERC : ATENA (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Entité participante : Université de Rome « La Sapienza » — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499718.0 €

Episodic autobiographical memory refers to the ability to recollect and re-experience events of our own life that occurred at a particular time and place. It allows for the development and maintenance of our unique personal identity and self-awareness, namely autonoetic consciousness. An integrated and comprehensive model of how and where episodic autobiographical memories are stored in the human brain is still lacking. The core hypothesis of ATENA is that previous experiences are spatially organized into a cognitive map and that temporal coding indexes the content of such a map. Also, a dynamic re-mapping should occur in the brain, as time passes after the event. Recent theoretical and methodological advances in cognitive neuroscience make the study of episodic autobiographical memory timely. ATENA will integrate cognitive, neuropsychological and neuroimaging approaches to demonstrate that retrieving autobiographical memories crucially relies on spatial and temporal processing. In brief, advanced information-based approaches to neuroimaging (i.e. representation similarity analysis and decoding) will be adopted to directly test the neural representation underlying episodic autobiographical memory and its possible dynamic re-mapping across time. A lifespan developmental study will be designed to test the ontogeny of place and time contribution to episodic autobiographical memory. Finally, the contribution of the alterations in time and place coding in different developmental and acquired neuropsychological conditions characterized by a deficit in episodic autobiographical memory will be tested. Besides a novel integrated neuroscientific account of episodic autobiographical memory and its development across the lifespan, ATENA will open new areas of investigation in the field of the human mind and its complexity and will inspire new approaches for neuropsychological rehabilitation of memory deficits.

Mots-clés : environmental navigation temporal processing episodic autobiographical memory
Projet ERC : NANOWHYR (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed Matter Physics
Entité participante : Université de Rome « La Sapienza » — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499393.0 €

Quantum photonic integrated circuits are ideal platforms for quantum computation and communication. A long-standing issue in their realization is the lack of a deterministic quantum light source compatible with silicon. Indeed, planar self-assembled III-V quantum dots (QDs) –which provide high-performance quantum light sources (i. e. single photons)– can hardly be grown on Si, and also lack the positioning control necessary for efficient post-growth III-V-on-Si hybrid integration. Nanowires (NWs), in contrast, are rod-shaped nanoscale semiconductors that can host intrinsically site-controlled III-V QDs and can even be grown on Si. However, QDs in NWs have yet to reach the performances of planar QDs, an issue that could be overcome by integrating QDs in NWs in photonic cavities. Such a solution is, at present, out of reach, because conventional creation of QDs during NW growth hinders their successful integration with cavities. The NANOWHYR project will allow the integration of QDs in NWs with cavities by realizing an unprecedented post-growth creation of QDs inside NWs. The new method consists of the incorporation of hydrogen in III-V nitride NWs whose bandgap can be controllably modified by hydrogen. Subsequent hydrogen removal by scanning near-field illumination will permit tuning the bandgap of the NW in a nanoscale region. This will allow us to form a QD in that region with a widely tunable energy. The deterministic control of the QD position and energy is the key that will enable us to efficiently integrate the QD with: A) planar photonic cavities fabricated on Si and B) vertical NW cavities grown on Si. This will lead to the breakthrough of a site-controlled, electrically-driven, telecom-friendly single photon source in Si photonic circuits. Moreover, this new strategy permits the modulation of semiconductor properties at the nanoscale, and it is thus expected to open new grounds in other research areas, such as photovoltaics and thermal energy converters.

Mots-clés : nanowires,iii v semiconductors,bandgap engineering,hydrogen irradiation,single photon emitters,quantum dots
Projet ERC : ActinID (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Molecules of Life: B iological  Mechanisms , Structures  and Functions
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 : 1499531.0 €

The actin cytoskeleton is essential to cellular function and hence to life. It is regulated not only via a complex synergistic and competitive interplay between actin-binding proteins (ABP), but also by filament biochemistry and filament geometry. Both the biochemical identity of an actin filament as well as the geometrical identity of actin networks are defined by ABP activity, while biochemistry and geometry also regulate ABP recruitment. However, it is still unknown how actin filament biochemistry, geometry and ABP activity jointly define actin cytoskeleton remodelling in a dynamic system such as cell migration. Resolving this critical relationship would enable a better understanding of the multitude of cellular processes that ultimately depend on actin. ActinID will tackle this question by advancing in situ structural biology to generate a molecular atlas of the actin cytoskeleton proteome in migratory cell protrusions. Our overarching aims are to: 1) Develop: cryo-electron tomography workflows to achieve 3D imaging of entire actin networks in cellular protrusions at single-filament resolution, combined with detailed quantitative analysis. This will provide the ground truth on how dynamic filament geometries steer directional cell movement. 2) Solve: high-resolution in situ structures of ABPs and F-actin and describe ABP quantity, ABP distribution and spatial correlation with their potential partners. This visual proteome will reveal how actin filament identities are regulated in an entire system. 3) Study: the reciprocal regulation of ABP activity, filament geometry and biochemistry via (genetic) manipulation of ABPs using integrative cell and structural biology experiments, and relate this to cell migration characteristics. ActinID will be transformative for our understanding of actin cytoskeleton regulation, while also advancing the potential of in situ structural biology to go beyond isolated structural descriptions of biological systems.

Mots-clés : structural biology,actin cytoskeleton,visual proteomics,cryo electron tomography,image processing,method development
Projet ERC : CIRCLE (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Entité participante : University College Cork — Pays : Irlande — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1499946.0 €

Reversing organ failure, a leading cause of death in sepsis, requires specific modulation of biological pathways in endothelial cells, which is currently not possible with the existing drugs available. Employing RNA-based drugs to control protein expression could offer a novel therapeutic strategy in the fight against sepsis. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a new class of non-coding RNAs with a unique closed-loop structure that could help address the current limitations of the RNA drugs in the disease context and open new therapeutic avenues. Therapeutic delivery of engineered synthetic circRNAs can allow taking full advantage of their unique features and functions, including increased intracellular stability, the ability to affect multiple biological pathways by sponging microRNA or proteins, and their potential for cellular context-specific control of protein expression via internal ribosome entry site (IRES)-mediated cap-independent translation. I recently co-developed methods for the circularization and purification of large synthetic circRNAs, and pioneered their use for robust and stable protein expression in eukaryotic cells, to address the short half-life of mRNA in biological systems. I also synthesized a new type of degradable polymers that enable tissue and cell-type selective delivery of large RNAs with low toxicity. Building on those findings, CIRCLE aims to expand the toolbox of therapeutic RNAs by engineering novel synthetic circRNAs for modulation of protein expression in sepsis (WP1 and WP2) and investigate the potential of synthetic circRNA delivery for developing RNA-based pharmacological intervention to reverse sepsis-associated lung and kidney failure (WP3 and WP4). By addressing an important gap in the knowledge on the utility of circRNAs for translational research the scientific impact of CIRCLE will extend across the research fields of pharmaceutical sciences, synthetic biology, and medicine.

Mots-clés : circular rna,nucleic acid delivery,polymeric nanocarriers,sepsis,endothelial dysfunction,drug delivery systems,non viral gene therapy