Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : ECOHERB (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth system science
Entité participante : Umeå University — Pays : Suède — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 44579.25 €

Forests slow global climate change by absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide but this ecosystem service is limited by soil nutrients. Herbivores potentially alter soil nutrients in a range of ways, but these have mostly only been recorded for large mammals. By comparison, the impacts of the abundant invertebrates in forests have largely been ignored and are not included in current models used to generate the climate predictions so vital for designing governmental policies The proposed project will use a pioneering new interdisciplinary approach to provide the most complete picture yet available of the rates, underlying drivers and ultimate impacts of key nutrient inputs from invertebrate herbivores across forest ecosystems worldwide. Specifically, we will: (1) Establish a network of herbivory monitoring stations across all major forest types, and across key environmental gradients (temperature, rainfall, ecosystem development). (2) Perform laboratory experiments to examine the effects of herbivore excreta on soil processes under different temperature and moisture conditions. (3) Integrate this information into a cutting-edge ecosystem model, to generate more accurate predictions of forest carbon sequestration under future climate change. The network established will form the foundation for a unique long-term global monitoring effort which we intend to continue long after the current funding time scale. This work represents a powerful blend of several disciplines harnessing an array of cutting edge tools to provide fundamentally novel insights into an area of direct and urgent importance for the society.

Mots-clés : data model integration,indirect climate drivers,plant herbivore interactions,plant soil linkages,trophic interactions
Projet ERC : LeaRNN (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : University of Cambridge — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : U. Cambridge
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1635240.15 €

Forming memories, generating predictions based on memories, and updating memories when predictions no longer match actual experience are fundamental brain functions. Dopaminergic neurons provide a so-called “teaching signal” that drives the formation and updates of associative memories across the animal kingdom. Many theoretical models propose how neural circuits could compute the teaching signals, but the actual implementation of this computation in real nervous systems is unknown. This project will discover the basic principles by which neural circuits compute the teaching signals that drive memory formation and updates using a tractable insect model system, the Drosophila larva. We will generate, for the first time in any animal, the following essential datasets for a distributed, multilayered, recurrent learning circuit, the mushroom body-related circuitry in the larval brain. First, building on our preliminary work that provides the synaptic-resolution connectome of the circuit, including all feedforward and feedback pathways upstream of all dopaminergic neurons, we will generate a map of functional monosynaptic connections. Second, we will obtain cellular-resolution whole-nervous system activity maps in intact living animals, as they form, extinguish, or consolidate memories to discover the features represented in each layer of the circuit (e.g. predictions, actual reinforcement, and prediction errors), the learning algorithms, and the candidate circuit motifs that implement them. Finally, we will develop a model of the circuit constrained by these datasets and test the predictions about the necessity and sufficiency of uniquely identified circuit elements for implementing learning algorithms by selectively manipulating their activity. Understanding the basic functional principles of an entire multilayered recurrent learning circuit in an animal has the potential to revolutionize, not only neuroscience and medicine, but also machine-learning and robotics.

Mots-clés : memory formation,memory updates,extinction,circuit mechanisms,dopamine,whole brain imaging of neural activity,drosophila,mushroom body
Projet ERC : LeaRNN (Horizon 2020, appel 2018, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Entité participante : UK Research and Innovation — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UKRI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 714759.85 €

Forming memories, generating predictions based on memories, and updating memories when predictions no longer match actual experience are fundamental brain functions. Dopaminergic neurons provide a so-called “teaching signal” that drives the formation and updates of associative memories across the animal kingdom. Many theoretical models propose how neural circuits could compute the teaching signals, but the actual implementation of this computation in real nervous systems is unknown. This project will discover the basic principles by which neural circuits compute the teaching signals that drive memory formation and updates using a tractable insect model system, the Drosophila larva. We will generate, for the first time in any animal, the following essential datasets for a distributed, multilayered, recurrent learning circuit, the mushroom body-related circuitry in the larval brain. First, building on our preliminary work that provides the synaptic-resolution connectome of the circuit, including all feedforward and feedback pathways upstream of all dopaminergic neurons, we will generate a map of functional monosynaptic connections. Second, we will obtain cellular-resolution whole-nervous system activity maps in intact living animals, as they form, extinguish, or consolidate memories to discover the features represented in each layer of the circuit (e.g. predictions, actual reinforcement, and prediction errors), the learning algorithms, and the candidate circuit motifs that implement them. Finally, we will develop a model of the circuit constrained by these datasets and test the predictions about the necessity and sufficiency of uniquely identified circuit elements for implementing learning algorithms by selectively manipulating their activity. Understanding the basic functional principles of an entire multilayered recurrent learning circuit in an animal has the potential to revolutionize, not only neuroscience and medicine, but also machine-learning and robotics.

Mots-clés : memory formation,memory updates,extinction,circuit mechanisms,dopamine,whole brain imaging of neural activity,drosophila,mushroom body
Projet ERC : SLIDE (Horizon 2020, appel 2019, Consolidator grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Products and processes engineering
Entité participante : University of Bologna — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UNIBO
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1403662.0 €

Friction and wear are common phenomena that impact all applications where moving components are in contact, from micro-electromechanical systems to wind turbines, and result in massive economic and environmental costs. By advancing tribological materials impressive energy savings, and consequent reduction of CO2 emissions, can be obtained. However, in comparison with other technological applications that rely on materials, tribology is remarkably less advanced and the development of lubricants is still based on trial-and-errors methods. Optimizing lubricant materials is challenging because their performances are ruled by molecular-level processes that occur at the buried interface, which are extremely difficult to monitor by experiments. Simulations can play a decisive role here, in particular those based on quantum mechanics, which is essential to accurately describe the interactions between surfaces in contact and simulate reactions in conditions of enhanced reactivity as those imposed by the mechanical stresses applied. The goal of SLIDE is to port the material design paradigm based on First Principles Material Discovery to the field of Tribology by the development and applications of i) a protocol for harnessing tribochemical reactions to reduce interface friction. SLIDE will focus, in particular, in the development of environmental-friendly alternatives to commercial additives used in engine oils; ii) a workflow for high throughput screening of solid interfaces. A public database for the intrinsic adhesion and shear strength of a wide number of materials pairs will be created. Such database will constitute a source of realistic parameters for continuum models, paving the way for serial multiscale approaches to tribology, from the electronic- to the macro scale. Moreover, with the aid of machine learning algorithms, general trends will be identified and rational ways to chemically modify interfaces for advanced applications will be identified.

Mots-clés : tribology,tribochemistry,lubricants,material interfaces,adhesion,friction,first principles calculations,high throughput
Projet ERC : FAST-DEVELOPS (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Proof of concept grants)
Entité participante : University of Rome Tor Vergata — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 150000.0 €

Friedreich ataxia (FRDA) is a devastating neurodegenerative orphan disease that affects children and young adults, and has no approved therapy. The disease progressively brings patients to severe disability and significantly reduces life expectancy. The genetic defect underlying the disease causes FRDA patients to produce only low amounts of the mitochondrial protein frataxin, compared to normal subjects. Low frataxin results in the accelerated death of peripheral sensory neurons, causing the disease. Goal of any tentative specific therapy is therefore to increase frataxin levels in FRDA patients. Building on our original discovery that unveiled the mechanism of physiological frataxin degradation, we are developing new chemical entities that manage to increase frataxin in FRDA patients cells by preventing the degradation of frataxin. This effort is currently funded by an ERC Advanced Grant (Friedreich Ataxia Seeks Therapy – FAST, project number 293699). We now plan to bring some of the most promising compounds emerging from the above mentioned ERC-funded project, to the proof of concept (POC) of efficacy in living sensory neurons derived from FRDA patients. This will be achieved by demonstrating that our compounds are able to increase frataxin in sensory neurons generated from patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells. A defined path for the further de-risking and development of compounds that have reached the POC stage, has been discussed together with Cydan Development, the leading orphan drug accelerator, and the VC firm Kurma Partners.

Mots-clés : friedreich ataxia,ubiquitin,frataxin,orphan drugs
Projet ERC : PhotoMutant (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Entité participante : Hebrew University of Jerusalem — Pays : Israël — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : HUJI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1397475.0 €

From a technological viewpoint photoreceptor proteins, the light-sensitive proteins involved in the sensing and response to light in a variety of organisms, represent biological light converters. Hence they are successfully utilized in a number of technological applications, e.g. the green-fluorescent protein used to visualize spatial and temporal information in cells. However, despite the ground-breaking nature of this utilization in life science and other disciplines, the attempts to design a photoreceptor for a particular application by protein mutation remains an open challenge. This is exactly the scope of my research proposal: the application of multi-scale modelling for the systematic design of biological photoreceptor mutants. With this target in mind I will study representatives of two prominent photoreceptor proteins subfamilies which are of towering interest to experimentalists: proteorhodopsins and cyanobacteriochromes. Computer models of these proteins will be constructed using accurate multi-scale modeling. Their excitation energies and other properties (e.g. excited-state reactivity and efficiency) will be calculated using multireference methods that were shown to have an accuracy of <3 kcal/mol. The insights gained from simulations of the wild-type proteins will provide the basis for proposing mutations with altered photochemical properties: in essence to predict absorption and emission spectra, excited-state lifetime and quantum yields. This research requires interactions across the disciplines, as the best candidates will be synthesized and characterized experimentally by collaborators. The outcome of these experiments will provide feedback to improve both the properties of the mutants and the simulation methodology. Ultimately this high-risk/high gain project should derive a comprehensive understanding that would result in novel biotechnological applications, e.g. optogenetic tools, fluorescent probes and biosensors.

Mots-clés : excited states,photochemistry,photobiology,multiscale modeling,simulations
Projet ERC : AMBH (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : Austrian Academy of Sciences — Pays : Autriche — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : OAW
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 775959.0 €

From medieval times, Arabic as well as European music was analysed in terms that were inherited from Classical Antiquity and had thus developed in a very different music culture. In spite of recent breakthroughs in the understanding of the latter, whose technicalities we access not only through texts and iconography, but also through instrument finds and surviving notated melodies, its relation to music traditions known from later periods and different places is almost uncharted territory. The present project explores relations between Hellenic/Hellenistic music as pervaded the theatres and concert halls throughout and beyond the Roman empire, Near Eastern traditions – from the diatonic system emerging from cuneiform sources to the flourishing musical world of the caliphates – and, as far as possible, African musical life south of Egypt as well – a region that maintained close ties both with the Hellenised culture of its northern neighbours and with the Arabian Peninsula. On the one hand, this demands collaboration between Classical Philology and Arabic Studies, extending methods recently developed within music archaeological research related to the Classical Mediterranean. Arabic writings need to be examined in close reading, using recent insights into the interplay between ancient music theory and practice, in order to segregate the influence of Greek thinking from ideas and facts that must relate to contemporaneous ‘Arabic’ music-making. In this way we hope better to define the relation of this tradition to the ‘Classical world’, potentially breaking free of Orientalising bias informing modern views. On the other hand, the study and reconstruction, virtual and material, of wind instruments of Hellenistic pedigree but found outside the confinements of the Hellenistic ‘heartlands’ may provide evidence of ‘foreign’ tonality employed in those regions – specifically the royal city of Meroë in modern Sudan and the Oxus Temple in modern Tajikistan.

Mots-clés : music archaeology
Projet ERC : IntScOmics (Horizon 2020, appel 2016, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Integrative Biology: from Genes and Genomes to Systems
Entité participante : Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences — Pays : Pays-Bas — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : KNAW
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2000000.0 €

From populations of unicellular organisms to complex tissues, cell-to-cell variability in phenotypic traits seems to be universal. To study this heterogeneity and its biological consequences, researchers have used advanced microscopy-based approaches that provide exquisite spatial and temporal resolution, but these methods are typically limited to measuring a few properties in parallel. On the other hand, next generation sequencing technologies allow for massively parallel genome-wide approaches but have, until recently, relied on studying population averages obtained from pooling thousands to millions of cells, precluding genome-wide analysis of cell-to-cell variability. Very excitingly, in the last few years there has been a revolution in single-cell sequencing technologies allowing genome-wide quantification of mRNA and genomic DNA in thousands of individual cells leading to the convergence of genomics and single-cell biology. However, during this convergence the spatial and temporal information, easily accessed by microscopy-based approaches, is often lost in a single-cell sequencing experiment. The overarching goal of this proposal is to develop single-cell sequencing technology that retains important aspects of the spatial-temporal information. In particular I will focus on integrating single-cell transcriptome and epigenome measurements with the physical cell-to-cell interaction network (spatial information) and lineage information (temporal information). These tools will be utilized to (i) explore the division symmetry of intestinal stem cells in vivo; (ii) to reconstruct the cell lineage history during zebrafish regeneration; and (iii) to determine lineage relations and the physical cell-to-cell interaction network of progenitor cells in the murine bone marrow.

Mots-clés : single cell sequencing,single cell genomics,single cell transcriptomics,single cell epigenetics
Projet ERC : BodyCapital (Horizon 2020, appel 2015, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The study of the human past
Entité participante : Université de Strasbourg — Pays : France — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UNISTRA
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2492123.75 €

From testicular grafting (1920s) to step counting watches (2014), the perceptions and practices of health seeking individuals have been marked by continuities and profound changes during a twentieth century largely shaped by the advent of a communication society. Visuals can be a source to understand transformations by postulating an interactive, performative power of mass media in societies. Which roles did visuals play in changes from public health and human capital collective understandings of the healthy self to new (sometimes debated) perceptions and practices of our bodies as forms of individual capital in an increasing market-economized world? Pursuing these questions, the project focuses on four fields of investigation -food/nutrition; movement/exercise/sports; sexuality/reproduction/infants and dependency/addiction/overconsumption- in Germany, France and Great Britain studied with an entangled history framework. Within this scope the project aims at understanding (1)how visuals shape our health related self-understandings and practices in a continuity/discontinuity from the bio-political to the bio-economic logic. (2) The project will explore and explain how and why understandings of body capital differ or overlap in European countries. (3) The project will analyse if and how visual media serve as a promotion-communication hyphen for twentieth century preventive-self understanding. With a visual perspective on a long twentieth century, the project seeks to better understand changes and continuities in the history of health intertwined with the history of media. This will provide new insights into how the internalization of bodycapital has evolved throughout the past century, how transformations in the media world (from film to TV to internet) play out at the individual level and how health challenges and cultural differences in body perceptions and practices persist in producing social distinction in an age of global information and advanced health systems.

Mots-clés : medical history,body history,health education,nutrition,disease,exercise,sexuality,reproduction,addiction,film history,media studies,social and economic history,europe,comparative history
Projet ERC : LINKSPM (Horizon 2020, appel 2017, Starting grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Condensed matter physics
Entité participante : Donostia International Physics Center — Pays : Espagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : DIPC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1734625.0 €

Fundamental material properties become highly susceptible to external perturbations in low dimensions. This presents tremendous new opportunities for manipulating the behavior of novel 2D layered materials and ultimately achieving unprecedented control over their performance when integrated into highly specific functional devices. However, strategies that enable such control are sorely lacking to date and remain an outstanding challenge for the materials science community. Progress here requires of a comprehensive microscopic picture of the fundamental properties of 2D materials in clear connection to their macroscopic behavior, a knowledge that is still missing due to the lack of experimental techniques that simultaneously probe multiple length regimes. The main objective of the proposed research is to demonstrate control over the electronic ground states of 2D materials via external strain and electromagnetic fields to build links of applicability for signal processing in electromechanical nanodevices. We will focus on 2D correlated materials exhibiting collective electronic phases such as superconductivity, which respond dramatically to external perturbations. The project aims to understand the interplay between these external stimuli and microscopic electronic phases, and to unambiguously correlate them with mesoscopic electrical transport and mechanical response. This project comprises three research thrusts: (i) Development of new instrumentation that provides a direct way to correlate atomic-scale and mesoscopic properties of materials, and to establish links between (ii) the electrical conductivity and (iii) the mechanical response of 2D correlated materials with their atomic-scale structure and stimulus-dependent electronic phase diagram. This project has the potential to transform this field by providing new pathways to control the behavior of layered nanostructures.

Mots-clés : 2d materials,electron correlation,phase transitions,mechanical properties,scanning probe microscopy,nanoresonators