Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : RaESETfides (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Université de Bologne — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1251212.0 €

The functioning of medieval economies has been widely debated and often misunderstood. RaESETfides will tackle the problem by looking at one of the most obscure conundrums in the history of the central Middle Ages: how could a group of small polities in the upper half of the Italian peninsula become the economic powerhouse of Latin Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries – a characteristic it would maintain, in fact, until the early modern era. The project will sit within a rapidly-developing field in the economic history of the Middle Ages. In The Donkey and the Boat: Reinterpreting the Mediterranean Economy, 950-1180 (OUP, 2023), Chris Wickham has shown that, during the 11th and 12th centuries, the most advanced economy of the Mediterranean basin was Egypt, but he also hypothesised that from the last quarter of the 12th century some Italian towns managed to take over much of the maritime commerce and shift it to northern Europe. How exactly this happened, however, remains to an extent a mystery, which is all the more fascinating when one considers that north-central Italy was agriculturally poor, politically fragmented and ravaged by constant warfare – the unlikely candidate to widespread economic prosperity. RaESETfides aspires to make a major contribution by taking into account an ill-studied area of research – that is, the institutional changes of north-central Italian polities and the economic impact of such changes. It will do so through the large-scale investigation of the written evidence preserved in the archives of seven cities, namely Genoa, Milan, Pisa, Rome, Siena, Venice and Verona, which will serve as a basis to pursue four innovative objectives – consisting in the study of exchange rates, of the evolution of land prices, of the debasement of the currency and of the transformation of credit markets. The project will take place at the University of Bologna, which has a vibrant historical culture but lacks, at present, a focus on medieval economy.

Mots-clés : numismatics statistics economic anthropology environmental history
Projet ERC : CATTLEFRONTIERS (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Université de Gand — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UGent
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

This project explores the transformations in cattle production in Southern and Central Africa during the colonial and early postcolonial period. During this period, (post)colonial governments, scientists, entrepreneurs and settlers promoted a broad range of interventions to overcome the allegedly uneconomic attitudes of African pastoralists and turn cattle into profitable commodities. Contested, adapted or eluded by African cattle herders and owners, these interventions transformed pre-existing cattle economies, pastoralist societies, rural ecologies and animal populations in many and often unexpected ways. This history, however, is still under-studied, only partially understood and marginalised in both African and global history. This project breaks new ground by offering the first history of these transformation processes from hoof to table, for multiple empires and over a long time frame, and by integrating them into global history through the concept of ‘commodity frontiers’. It pursues these objectives through a series of interlocking case studies on French, Portuguese and Belgian (post)colonies in Southern and Central Africa. These draw on multi-sited and multilingual archival work and combine methodological approaches from African, social, economic, environmental, colonial and global history, as well as the history of science. The project not only rewrites and rethinks the history of Africa’s (post)colonial cattle economies. In so doing, it will also write livestock back into the agricultural and socio-economic history of Africa thus far focused on cash crops and minerals, integrate African cattle in global economic and commodity history and greatly enhance our knowledge of veterinary science and knowledge. By analysing how the interplay of global capitalism, science and empire transformed cattle regimes in Africa and beyond, it will also enhance our understanding of current debates on the social and ecological costs of livestock production.

Mots-clés : history of africa,agriculture,environment
Projet ERC : MiCoS (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems E ngineering
Entité participante : Université de Gand — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UGent
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1321188.0 €

Plastics are found in nearly every environment and disrupt key ecosystem services. While the effect of plastic in marine and freshwater ecosystems has been studied extensively, effects of plastic on soil ecosystem functions such as plant growth, microbial biomass and water permeability have been mostly overlooked, particularly for the smallest particles, the microplastics (MPs; ≤ 5 mm). The lack of appropriate techniques and methodologies for sampling, extraction and detection hamper the research concerning MP distribution in soil ecosystems. This research gap has led to fragmentary knowledge and even contradictory results in MP studies on soil ecosystems, as different concentrations, sizes, shapes and MP polymer types were considered. Therefore fundamental insights in the role of MPs on soil and plant health are missing. We will advance the field by working in a three step approach to mechanistically define how MP pollution outbalances the soil (and plant) ecosystem. First, the risk of MP pollution in soil will be assessed by correlating MP concentrations of 240 soils with soil health indicators. To measure the MP concentration, a fast, cost-effective and standardized method to detect, identify and quantify MPs (≥ 1 µm) in soils will be developed. Second, these correlations between MPs and the soil health indicators will be validated and tested in greenhouse experiments, to understand the biological underpinnings that drive these correlations. MP induced changes in plant growth, plant disease susceptibility, soil texture, soil chemical composition and the microbial community will be studied. Third, to reduce the risk (introduction and accumulation) of MPs in soil ecosystems, we will actively search for biodegrading organisms making use of a novel sequencing approach. With this multidisciplinary approach, we will be able to mechanistically define the effects of MPs on soil and plant health and advance the field by identifying plastic-biodegrading microorganisms.

Mots-clés : microplastics,soil health,plant development,dna stable isotope probing,statistical modelling
Projet ERC : ReGenCAT (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and Processes Engineering
Entité participante : École polytechnique Chalmers — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

To address today’s environmental challenges, the production of energy and chemicals must rapidly change. The chemical industry currently relies on catalysts, materials that speed up reactions, in 90% of its processes. Catalysis will thus play a pivotal role in transitioning from our fossil fuel-based society to a more sustainable and renewable society. However, most catalyst materials rely on expensive and scarce metals. Even more strikingly, these metal-based catalysts can present very low atom efficiency (below 20%). In other words, most metal atoms are not used in the reaction. With 34 materials and metals identified as critical by the European Union, metal scarcity issues are thus key hurdles to achieving a clean energy transition. Finally, most catalysts lose their activity over time, and their regeneration is costly. Catalytic reactors and catalysts must be reimagined to face these challenges.  The goal of ReGenCAT is to design a groundbreaking electro-thermocatalytic reactor capable of in situ regeneration of catalysts at low energy costs. The reactor will rely on atom-efficient catalysts called dilute metal alloys. By exploiting the dynamic restructuring of dilute metal alloys in response to changes in applied electrochemical potentials, the reactor will enable in situ regeneration of catalysts under mild conditions at low temperatures and pressure. It will yield synergy and increase the lifetime of catalysts in important reactions involving biomass-derived chemicals. In the long term, I envision that the unique integration of thermocatalysis and electrocatalysis developed in ReGenCAT will also significantly advance current and emerging sustainable technologies relying on renewable electricity - such as fuel cells and electrolyzers - by improving their overall efficiency.

Mots-clés : catalyst regeneration,dilute metal alloy catalysts,integrated electro thermocatalytic reactor
Projet ERC : BHHQG (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Fundamental Constituents of Matter
Entité participante : Université de Gand — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UGent
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1497050.0 €

The project "Black Hole Horizons in Quantum Gravity" aims for an in-depth investigation of black holes and the information paradox in the context of quantum gravity. Due to the recent breakthroughs in astronomy, these exotic objects have moved from the purely theoretical realm to being abundant in our physical universe. Surprisingly, our theoretical understanding of them is insufficient to even in principle understand their horizons and what happens behind them. Our approach to tackle these questions is to combine a lower-dimensional approach with holography as a guide. Within this framework, substantial breakthroughs were made in the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models, and their low-energy gravitational description in terms of Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity. This model is exactly solvable to a large degree, and many important lessons on black hole physics and quantum gravity can be studied quantitatively and exactly. Our goals within this project span across two lines. Firstly, we will apply quantum gravitational results on the Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity model to address aspects of the black hole information puzzle in a quantitative way and probe the deep questions on black hole horizons largely building on our detailed knowledge of this model. In particular, we will calculate correlation functions of local infalling bulk observables, and assess the effect of quantum gravitational corrections to evaporation. Secondly, it is vital to investigate the universality of the set of techniques and methods we use in Jackiw-Teitelboim gravity. We will do this by pursuing several roads simultaneously (dilaton gravity models, 2d string theory, the original Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model, supersymmetric models and 3d pure gravity). Armed with these results, we will extrapolate to higher dimension and in particular to our physical universe making contact with the first objective.

Mots-clés : black hole physics,holography,quantum gravity,string theory
Projet ERC : PolyElectroCAT (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Materials Engineering
Entité participante : École polytechnique Chalmers — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1500000.0 €

As the top industrial energy consumer, the chemical industry must rapidly develop new low-carbon technologies to lower the industry’s carbon footprint for preparing chemicals and materials for our everyday life. Current synthetic approaches have a low atom economy and rely on the functionalization of reagents with reactive groups that form desired products at elevated temperatures or pressures. These processes are wasteful and energy-intensive, they form hazardous side products and require energy for heating that is often provided by fossil fuels. Imagine a future where organic chemical reactions are driven with electricity from renewables with a high atom economy and fewer side products. Electroorganic synthesis holds great promise for achieving these goals since reactive intermediates are formed in situ at electrode surfaces, forming products with high selectivities under efficient reaction conditions. While the field is rapidly maturing and highly selective processes are reported for a wide spectrum of reactions, the majority of electrode materials currently employed are based on precious metals. Relying on precious metals for developing the technology is a risk due to their scarcity, supply-chain bottlenecks, and high cost. PolyElectroCAT develops a new class of electrode materials for efficient electroorganic synthesis using solely earth-abundant elements. The materials are redox-active carbon-based materials with tailor-made metal complexes that create high activity and selectivity for energy-uphill, reductive electrocatalytic reactions. These materials achieve functionality rarely achieved for metals where electrode materials are solution processible and function as binder- and additive-free electrodes. Moreover, the electrode reacts volumetrically, enabling the exploration of entire new directions for electrosynthesis employing the entire bulk of the electrode material rather than the surface only.

Mots-clés : organic mixed ionic electronic conductors,organic semiconductors,redox active conjugated polymers,single phase electrodes,electroorganic synthesis
Projet ERC : FEEDRES (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
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 : 1377554.0 €

Our planet is changing at a pace never experienced before. Ecosystems worldwide are impacted by multiple anthropogenic pressures and are experiencing abrupt changes, sometimes leading to regime shifts. Marine ecosystems are prone to these dynamics and regime shifts are at the spotlight of research which seeks to reduce the uncertainties related to our incomplete understanding of these processes. Three main questions need to be answered to understand regime shifts: when they happen; i.e. detection, why; i.e. drivers and characteristics, and how; i.e. mechanisms. Present literature has focused mainly on detecting regime shifts, neglecting feedbacks and how ecosystems function. This ignorance has limited the causal understanding of these phenomena and has hindered the capacity to predict them, a fundamental step under global changes. FEEDRES brings feedbacks mechanisms at the fore and aims at responding to all the three challenges to understand and project regime shifts. To fulfil this, FEEDRES will develop a cutting-edge methodological framework combining methods from system dynamics theory and ecology. FEEDRES will follow three steps. 1) Map worldwide marine regime shifts – Through a systematic mapping FEEDRES will assess the extent of regime shifts, highlighting knowledge gaps (when). 2) Empirically study the important structural elements and connections that characterize marine systems under regime shifts (from populations to socio-ecological systems) – FEEDRES will apply a two-step modelling approach to understand how the system change during regime shifts (why). 3) Develop mechanistic models to understand how changes in feedback mechanisms mediate marine regime shifts (how). Based on the knowledge developed FEEDRES will identify common feedback types in marine systems and will project the likelihood of regime shifts. FEEDRES will revolutionise ecosystem science and will increase the understanding on how complex systems behave under cumulative stressors.

Mots-clés : system theory,regime shifts,resilience,feedbacks mechanisms,tipping points
Projet ERC : OMEN (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
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 : 1870925.0 €

Earthquakes are one of the most expressive phenomena of our planet, able to suddenly reshape the surface of the Earth and affect countless lives every year. Any effort towards earthquake forecast and hazard mitigation must rely on a profound comprehension of seismogenesis. However, earthquakes are phenomena that emerge from a complex, dynamic system of mechanisms that operate at inaccessible depths within the Earth. The impossibility to directly observe the birth of an earthquake (i.e., the “nucleation”) frustrates our effort to have new breakthroughs on their physics. The overarching goal of OMEN is to directly observe the mechanisms of earthquake nucleation to allow for a step-change in our understanding of seismic slip and its potential precursors. OMEN will overcome the current experimental approaches that rely only on the indirect measure of sample properties and/or use of rock-analogue materials. With an innovative rock-deformation apparatus and the use of transparent high-tech glass, I will be able to simulate and, for the first time, film the birth of earthquakes in natural fault rocks at hypocentral conditions. This method, in combination with several investigation techniques (visible and infrared footage, acoustic emissions, deep learning-assisted image analysis etc.), will offer unprecedented detail on the processes during the preparation and propagation of seismic slip. In particular, I will shed new light on how the complexity of natural rocks affect the dynamics, resulting into the formulation of a new, more reliable physical framework for the description of earthquake nucleation. Laboratory and theoretical results will be upscaled to nature thanks to the integration of microstructural and field studies of natural faults. OMEN is the unique opportunity to open a literal window into the dynamics of earthquakes, shifting the paradigm from an empirically quantitative documentation to a direct and truly quantitative observation.

Mots-clés : rock mechanics,earthquake,nucleation,fault,friction,experiments,fabric,machine learning,video footage
Projet ERC : ANTFourier (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Université de Cambridge — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1493135.0 €

Many of the central problems in analytic number theory concern the existence of patterns in the primes or the randomness properties of the Möbius function. The aim of this proposal is to make progress on such questions, using in particular methods from higher order Fourier analysis.  Two fundamental conjectures about randomness of the Möbius function are the Chowla and Sarnak conjectures. This proposal aims to make progress on these conjectures and their variants, in particular by studying a conjecture on higher order uniformity of the Möbius function that is closely tied to these problems.  Regarding patterns in the primes, the approach in this proposal is to establish new Gowers norm estimates for the primes and other multiplicatively defined sequences. Both quantitative Gowers norm bounds and short interval Gowers norms will be studied. These have potential for various applications, such as a version of the prime tuples conjecture with a short average and convergence results for multiple ergodic averages along the primes.

Mots-clés : analytic number theory,higher order fourier analysis,gowers norms,prime numbers,additive combinatorics,sieve theory,ergodic averages
Projet ERC : nGHOST (Horizon Europe, appel 2025, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Universe Sciences
Entité participante : Université de Liège — Pays : Belgique — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1963750.0 €

In the ever-evolving realm of space instrumentation, the quest for excellence is endless. Scientists tirelessly pursue optical instruments that can capture the universe in unparalleled clarity. Over the years, instruments have improved through the introduction of innovative design concepts and manufacturing techniques, as well as with the use of better detectors. However, for the most demanding applications, stray light (SL) increasingly emerges as the primary limiting factor. SL must be minimized by design through optimal opto-mechanical layout and material selection. In the most challenging situations, this is however not sufficient and a post-processing correction is necessary to reach the scientific requirements. For that, SL characterization is conducted on-ground, to ensure that the instrument does not present any unexpected defect, and to provide kernels for the SL correction algorithms. However, the capabilities of SL characterization were stretched to their utmost extremes. Identifying defects is extremely complex and often impossible, and SL correction algorithms require SL measurement campaigns which are time consuming and subject to inaccuracies. To enable the development of the next generations of space optical instruments, a new paradigm is necessary. This is my long-term scientific objective and the heart of this project. In that frame, my objective will be to mature a new technology: the SL characterization by use of ultrafast time-of-flight imaging.

Mots-clés : stray light,optical testing,optical calibration,ray tracing,baffle,space instrument,ghost reflections,scattering,radiometric accuracy,high contrast imagers