Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : VeNiss (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Texts and Concepts
Entité participante : Université de Padoue — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UniPd
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1266856.66 €

In the historical tradition, Venice is a city without walls and gates, and hence lacking suburbs. VeNiss reverses this trope by examining the urban, political, and cultural patterns connecting the capital with the chain of over sixty islands forming its lagoon fringes. Investigation of their integral role in Venice's spatial practices establishes a ground-breaking approach for the study of historic cities' margins as connective tissues, a subject seldom tackled by urban scholars. Reframing Venice within its archipelago, this project addresses that gap and explores the impact of urban edges on city planning, economic dependence, social responsiveness, and artistic production. From the 16th century, Venice became critically conscious of the granular nature of its hinterland, constructing a governance that involved the islands. Lagoon sites were systematically included in the network of capillary infrastructures for the city's supply, defence, and healthcare as well as civic rituals. Cultural entanglements sometimes bypassed the city, as novel lagoon architectural solutions permeated the Italian Peninsula through the agency of religious communities. Maps, atlases, and books of islands published on and in Venice helped consolidate the capital's archipelagic thinking into a coherent framework. VeNiss sheds light on this physical and theoretical construct –abruptly interrupted by the fall of the Venetian Republic (1797)– through a holistic project which combines social history, architecture, art and literary studies with advanced digital technologies. Coupling close archival readings with modelling systems, it proposes a pioneering methodology to reconstruct the islands' transformations alongside their interwoven relationships in a geographically- and temporally-based digital environment. VeNiss will constitute a crucial contribution to Venetian history while providing a valuable model for future urban studies seeking to visualise dispersed places through time and space.

Mots-clés : urban history history of venice digital heritage reconstruction digital knowledge representation
Projet ERC : SYNPHOCAT (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Université de Padoue — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UniPd
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1920260.0 €

Solar light is an inexhaustible, abundant, and free reactant that can promote the construction and transformation of molecules. The chemistry community is particularly interested in photocatalysis, which uses light energy to promote a chemical transformation. Photocatalysts (PCs) play a key role in transformative light-driven processes by donating or receiving electrons to or from the target substrate. The selection and structural refinement of PCs can channel reactivity to diverse mechanistic pathways, but often proceeds via trial and error. Here, I will use structure-property relationships to: 1) define novel bimodal organic PCs able to catalyse thermodynamically demanding and opposite photoredox events exploiting their electronically excited state; 2) explore the PCs reactivity by means of their radical ions, going beyond conventional photoredox approaches; 3) capitalise on the new reactivity and bimodal way of action of the PCs to implement novel selective transformations of biological targets under physiological conditions. These project core concepts will be accomplished by the rational evaluation and optimisation of the PCs physicochemical and structural properties as well as the careful analysis of the mechanistic features subtending the light-driven chemical events. Overall, SYNPHOCAT will deliver new conceptual and experimental tools for the sustainable light-driven construction and functionalisation of biorelevant molecules, opening the way to a new dimension of sustainable light-driven chemistry.

Mots-clés : photoredox catalysis,organocatalysis
Projet ERC : MiMETIC (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Materials Engineering
Entité participante : Université de Padoue — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UniPd
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2216250.0 €

MiMETIC will lay the foundation for a new generation of electrically reconfigurable microwave devices actively tuned by organic electrochemical transistors, a class of electronic devices that exploits the unique properties of organic mixed ion-electron conductors. The project will study the unexplored fundamental properties of these emerging materials in the microwave spectrum, as well as address the groundbreaking implications of this novel metadevice tuning strategy within the fields of tunable/programmable metasurfaces for large-area microwave optics, wireless communication and untethered bioelectronic interfaces. Indeed, despite their widespread use in printed electronics, energy harvesting, organic bioelectronics and neuromorphic devices, the exceptional potential of organic electronic materials and transistors has in fact been largely overlooked in the context of microwave technology. The ambitious plan of MiMETIC has thus the following objectives: i) the microwave characterization of organic mixed conductors across the 1-100 GHz range, thus validating this metadevice tuning strategy in a frequency range that is expected to have significant relevance for present and future wireless technologies (e.g. 5G and 6G); ii) the realization of reconfigurable metasurfaces on large-area and thin flexible substrates, adopting only high-throughput deposition techniques; iii) the demonstration of a novel class of microwave devices and metadevices that exploit the unique capabilities of organic mixed conductors, in particular towards the realization of wireless bioelectronic interfaces for healthcare and distributed sensing, as well as of neuromorphic and exotic photonics. MiMETIC will thus expand the already remarkable technological significance of organic mixed ion-electron conductors by establishing a new generation of microwave devices and metadevices with radically enhanced pervasiveness and utility, as well as create new interdisciplinary research opportunities.

Mots-clés : microwave metadevices organic electrochemical transistors organic mixed ion electron conductors organic semiconductors printed electronics organic elctronics organic bioelectronics
Projet ERC : CERTASTATES (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : Université Louis-et-Maximilien de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1494634.0 €

Survival requires accurate and rapid implementation of adaptive behavior. In a world where our physiological needs and surrounding environment are ever changing, one wrong move could make the difference between life and death. How does the brain successfully compute changes in internal state and external cues, while factoring in experience, to drive the most appropriate behavioral outcome from moment-to-moment? Mounting evidence suggests that the zona incerta, a little studied region, is a central switchboard for such adaptive behavior. This subthalamic nucleus has widespread connections and was recently found to regulate an astounding range of behaviors critical for survival including defense, sleep, feeding and much more. It also encodes associated changes in internal states, such as anxiety, fatigue and hunger, and integrates sensory inputs across modalities. These features suggest that a central function of the zona incerta might be to locally compute needed transitions in behavior based on internal state changes, which are then broadcast to downstream targets to convert this into action. To address this hypothesis, CERTASTATES will employ cutting-edge molecular, circuit tracing, recording and in vivo imaging technologies in mice together with diverse behavioral paradigms and rich behavioral state readouts. The ultimate objective is to uncover how distinct internal state changes: (i) are processed in defined cell types and circuits, (ii) drive behavioral flexibility and (iii) are influenced by deep brain stimulation, motivated by the fact that the zona incerta is one of few established targets in humans for this therapeutic approach. Together, this work will advance our understanding of how neural circuits generate internal states, and in turn process, broadcast and use this information to guide adaptive behavior. Moreover, it will open an entry point for translation by exploring how clinically-applied neuromodulation can transform these vital computations.

Mots-clés : internal states,adaptive behavior,deep brain stimulation,neuronal and circuit mechanisms
Projet ERC : PHAGE-PRO (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems E ngineering
Entité participante : Université Louis-et-Maximilien de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1071087.0 €

Amid the antibiotic resistance crisis, the century-old practice of phage therapy, the use of bacterial viruses to treat bacterial infections, has gained renewed attention. Despite extensive research and clear-cut advantages over antibiotics, phage therapy has yet to gain momentum. This is primarily due to remaining limitations, e.g., the time-consuming process of identifying suitable phages and limited in vivo efficacy. With PHAGE-PRO I propose a new technology to overcome the shortcomings of traditional phage therapy. Unlike the conventional use of lytic phages, I will capitalize on prophages – viruses that integrate into bacterial genomes capable of excision and replication. By integrating prophages into safe carrier strains, originating from probiotics, I will unlock two pivotal benefits, (1) rapid identification of suitable phages using advanced machine learning, (2) sustained in-vivo efficacy. Yet, the core advantage of PHAGE-PRO lies in its unparalleled synergy of phage killing and pathogen competitive exclusion imposed by the probiotic. To realize this concept, the development of predictive tools is essential to quickly identify the most promising prophages and probiotic combinations for each pathogen (WP1). Prophage engineering (WP2), followed by rigorous in vitro testing will ensure a high safety and efficacy. High-throughput in vivo experiments using wax moth larvae will reveal the most promising candidate which I will subsequently validate through a proof of principle experiment using a poultry model (WP3). Although I initially tailored PHAGE-PRO to treat Salmonella infections in poultry, its impact extends far beyond: This new technology holds the potential for transformative changes in phage therapy, not only advancing infection management in livestock farming through the enhancement of animal health and the assurance of food product safety, but also by opening the door for targeted preventive and therapeutic interventions in human medicine.

Mots-clés : phage therapy,prophage engineering,probiotics,antibiotic resistance,resistance evolution,bioinformatics,in vitro testing,in vivo experiments
Projet ERC : NeuRoPROBE (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Entité participante : Université Louis-et-Maximilien de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1498813.0 €

Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or Multiple Sclerosis are severe health burdens and major global challenges for societies and healthcare systems. Therapeutic interventions in these diseases are not satisfying, since there is no treatment strategy that can halt or reverse disease progression. Several failed attempts at finding a cure for neurodegeneration have significantly reduced the interest for further research - yet, more than ever, new approaches are needed. Critically missing are pharmacologically validated targets for efficient neurodegenerative disease treatment and it is exactly here that NeuRoPROBE aims to close this gap. The orphan nuclear receptors (NR) tailless homologue (TLX) and nuclear receptor related-1 protein (Nurr1) have been identified in knockout studies as prime candidates. However, ligands for their pharmacological control as tools for therapeutic validation are lacking. NeuRoPROBE will enable pharmacological modulation of these transcription factors as a new and groundbreaking strategy to counteract neurodegeneration. To meet its overall aim, NeuRoPROBE will (1) develop chemical probes (CP) and PROTACs for TLX and Nurr1, (2) employ generative artificial intelligence (AI) for molecular design to accelerate CP and PROTAC development, (3) establish phenotypic cellular models in 3D settings to mimic neurodegeneration, and (4) use CPs and PROTACs in the phenotypic models for pharmacological control of TLX and Nurr1 to validate their modulation in neurodegeneration. This challenging and highly multidisciplinary endeavor will profit from my strong interdisciplinary background in the field of NR ligand discovery and pharmacology as well as in AI-based molecular design. NeuRoPROBE will open new avenues towards regenerative treatments in neurodegeneration, close the gaps in pharmacological control of TLX and Nurr1, and substantially contribute to consolidating AI techniques for structural optimization.

Mots-clés : chemical probes,proteolysis targeting chimeras protacs,nuclear receptor,transcription factor,target validation,artificial intelligence,machine learning,chemical language models,computer aided molecular design
Projet ERC : TANGO (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Computer Science and Informatics
Entité participante : Université catholique de Louvain — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCL
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1160854.75 €

Current interactive systems provide realistic audio-visual feedback while haptic feedback is limited even though haptic interactions with devices are essential and touch plays a large role to convey immersive sensations. Thus, usable high-fidelity haptic rendering has the potential to improve interactions with interactive interfaces and future metaverses. Knowledge has started emerging on haptic rendering and multisensory perception of tangible objects. Still, combining multiple techniques to stimulate the full bandwidth of tactile sensitivity remains a hard challenge and little is known about the perceptual integration of tactile cues such as friction, temperature, or vibrations. Thus, there is the intricate twofold challenge of developing new haptic techniques based on models of cognitive multisensory integration whose investigation requires advanced stimulation techniques. Thus, the originality of TANGO is to address the problem of multisensory rendering of tangible objects from a holistic view by considering simultaneously multi-dimensional haptic techniques, tactile acuity across its psychophysical dimensions, and mechanisms of multisensory integration. Specifically, TANGO aims to 1/ characterize typical gestures and contact mechanics during interaction with real objects. 2/ understand how gestures and the dimension of haptic feedback influence perception of simulated tactile objects 3/ create a computational model of multisensory integration that outputs perceived realism during interaction with objects. Studies will also consider two main population factors: age and sensory impairment. Finally, the outcome from 1-3 will serve to design sensorily rich tangible 3D elements on displays, in virtual reality, and on maps for visually impaired. By a strongly interdisciplinary approach combining haptics, computer science, and neuroscience, TANGO will optimize haptic rendering in multisensory interactive interfaces to enhance its use in human-computer interactions.

Mots-clés : multisensory integration,haptics,computational modelling,psychophysics
Projet ERC : ArcticWATCH (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : Université catholique de Louvain — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UCL
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1456652.5 €

The Arctic is currently transitioning toward a new climatic state that will be characterized by seasonally sea-ice-free conditions almost every year from the 2050s, with widespread ecological, climatic, and societal consequences. There is growing evidence that the future summer sea ice retreat will not occur at a constant rate. Indeed, climate model simulations are suggestive of pronounced sub-decadal fluctuations on top of the long-term trend, leading to periods of relative stability followed by abrupt sea ice decline in hardly 3-5 years. A lot remains to be understood regarding the precursors, mechanisms, predictability, and impacts of these rapid events. In particular, it is unclear how close we might be to the next one.  The overall objective of this project, ArcticWATCH, is to build an integrated early warning system that alerts on the possibility of rapid Arctic sea ice loss for the following summer up to five years. This system will provide annually updated assessments and will synthesize multiple lines of evidence harvested from various data sources (pre-existing and generated during the project), including climate model projections, initialized climate model and machine-learning-based predictions, satellite observations, and climate reconstructions.  By introducing innovative targeted numerical experiments, ArcticWATCH will also identify the new pathways of sea ice predictability in a warmer world and will thereby provide evidence-based guidance regarding the design of the Arctic observing system for the next 30 years. Finally, ArcticWATCH will make a leap forward in depicting environmental impacts during and after rapid sea ice loss events, from short (Arctic heatwaves and precipitation extremes) to long (interactions with the Arctic and North Atlantic oceanic circulation) timescales.  The hypothesis that, after a decade of relatively stable conditions, Arctic sea ice is poised to an abrupt decline before 2030, will be paid utmost attention.

Mots-clés : arctic,sea ice,rapid climate changes,seasonal to interannual prediction
Projet ERC : ImmGenDC (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Integrative B iology : from Genes and Genomes to S ystems
Entité participante : Université Louis-et-Maximilien de Munich — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : LMU
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 0.0 €

Antiviral immunity and autoimmune diseases exhibit high interindividual variability. Despite intensive research, the genetic and molecular basis of this variability is incompletely understood. A key player of the immune system is the plasmacytoid dendritic cell(pDC). Recent single-cell work revealed functionally distinct pDC subsets. Considering that pDCs respond to many pathogens, this highlights a previously underappreciated functional diversity of pDCs. I hypothesize that the genetic regulation of pDCs plays a fundamental role in explaining antiviral response and autoimmune variability. Based on my previous work on immune cells, this genetic regulation is expected to be highly context-specific depending on cell type, cell response, ancestry populations and sex among other factors. The overarching goal of this proposal is to elucidate the context-specificity of immune response and its genetic regulation in pDCs to improve our understanding of human antiviral response variation and pinpoint undiscovered disease pathways of autoimmune diseases. To this end, I will generate population-scale, linked scATAC-, sc3’RNA- and scLong-read cDNA-seq data of baseline and TLR7-stimulated pDCs from healthy individuals across three ancestry populations. I will identify novel pDC subtypes and their immune-regulatory circuits by integrated multiome analyses. Molecular quantitative trait loci(QTLs) and their degree of context-specificity will be used to build prediction models of genetically determined immune responsiveness and decode autoimmune disease loci to develop mechanistically anchored interventions for precision medicine. ImmGenDC will gain fundamental insights into the variability of antiviral immune response that will enable the development of new treatments as exemplified by the current pandemic. Importantly, ImmGenDC will also identify genetic determinants of immune variability across diverse ancestry populations thus paving the way for equitable access to medicine.

Mots-clés : eqtl,human immune system,innate immunity,plasmacytoid dendritic cells,interferon,antiviral immunity,autoimmune diseases,human genetics,immunogenetics,functional genomics,population genetics,gwas,multi omics,precision medicine
Projet ERC : X CELL (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences
Entité participante : Université d'Uppsala — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499864.0 €

Chemical reactions govern cellular behavior, and are revealed by analysis of small molecules involved in intracellular metabolism. Individual cells in biological systems continuously adapt to improve survival and biological function, making them chemically and behaviorally heterogeneous. Unraveling this heterogeneity is essential to realize the correlation to disease state and health, but it is masked in bulk analyses of millions of cells. I propose to develop a groundbreaking analytical approach for multi-omics of living individual cells to reveal variability in cellular behavior. This will be achieved by coupling a microfluidic device that enables controlled chemical exposure of a cell, to an efficient ionization probe for on-line time-resolved mass spectrometric measurements. By measuring the dynamics of each cell’s metabolome, lipidome, and secretome, novel insights into heterogeneity in intracellular activities will be gained. In addition, the level of heterogeneity will be uncovered through correlation with the cell’s transcriptome.  A special emphasis will be given to characterize individual β-cells that are key regulators of blood glucose by insulin secretion and whose dysfunction leads to type 2 diabetes. The behavior of individual β-cells is heterogeneous and ranges from complete failure to secrete insulin to compensating with increased secretion. I will use the single-cell multi-omics approach to test the hypothesis that intracellular metabolism is the key to β-cell dysfunction, and analyze healthy and diabetic β-cells upon chemical exposure to establish i) their metabolic heterogeneity and differences, ii) variations and temporal dynamics in their metabolic behavior and iii) metabolic roadblocks that correlate with β-cell dysfunction.  The single-cell multi-omics approach will open new horizons for understanding cellular heterogeneity, realizing cellular behavior that promotes health, and identifying treatment targets.

Mots-clés : mass spectrometry,single cell,metabolites,lipids