Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-erc-participations-et-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Projet ERC : HYPERSPIM (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Systems and Communication Engineering
Entité participante : Université de Rome « La Sapienza » — Pays : Italie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2490000.0 €

Efficient hardware for combinatorial optimization and machine learning impacts science, engineering, and society. With new computational models, photonics tackle problems intractable with conventional computing systems. However, existing devices only scale up to thousands of spins and operate at the second timescale. I demonstrate photonic machines for ultrafast parallel processing of millions of spins with microsecond timescale. The strategy is minimizing a class of functions, the Ising Hamiltonian, by a new computational system that uses a high-dimensional feature space and speeds up optimization by orders of magnitude by ultrafast nonlinear optical processes. I build digital, optoelectronics, and all-optical classical and quantum devices and benchmark with real-world, large-scale problems. By spatial modulation technology and a cheap, simple, and scalable design, light propagation is recurrently trained towards the ground state of a programmable Ising Hamiltonian. Starting from my proof-of-concept, first, I aim at the energetically efficient computing of large-scale Hamiltonians. Second, I include self-optimizing all-optical nonlinear ultrafast phase-locking processes. Third, I demonstrate record combinatorial optimization by letting the spins evolve in a high dimensional space to guarantee high success probability. HYPERSPIM leverages the interplay of classical and quantum dynamics through the onset of entanglement and squeezing. The unprecedented scale and versatility allow the first quantum optimization tests for real-world complex computational tasks. HYPERSPIM achieves the fastest and biggest optical computing device operating in classical and quantum regimes in an interdisciplinary route towards new photonic artificial intelligence, large-scale all-optical computing, and fundamental science.
Projet ERC : ButterFly (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced 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 : 2499811.0 €

Biological material science is a new research topic at the interface of biology and physical science, having a common ground in chemistry, physics, mechanics and engineering. During their evolution, biological materials have developed a unique combination of properties to fulfil specific functions through a series of ingenious and distinctive design elements, evident in different systems created by nature. As an example, butterfly wings have an extraordinary combination of lightness, durability and iridescence. We have merely scratched the surface of this knowledge. Exploring the basis of the unique performance of natural and biological materials, a material science perspective has been widely adopted. However, the study of natural systems considering a structural perspective is still at its early stage and, up to now, we have not fully taken advantage of this potentially unique and immense source of design inspiration, especially in the field of structural integrity and fatigue design. ButterFly is aimed to fill this gap in knowledge making a ground-breaking jump towards bioinspired fatigue design. Fatigue is in fact the most ubiquitous mode of fracture accounting for more than 80% of all in service failures in structural components; however, available design approaches are still deterministic and uselessly repetitive. ButterFly will, for the first time, develop a novel and reliable mechanistic approach able to capture the salient design principles allowing long-term durability of natural systems and will transfer this new fundamental knowledge to design fatigue super-resistant structures. Building upon promising results from my research group, I am convinced that ButterFly will induce an utterly new paradigm-shift in fatigue design inspired by Nature with a considerable impact on industrial design practice, paving the way to a new era of smart and fully optimized fatigue design.
Projet ERC : Tryptaxis (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Immunity, Infection and I mmunotherapy
Entité participante : Université de Wurtzbourg — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499228.75 €

Many protozoan parasites have complex life cycles requiring migration through different organs in their hosts. The current mind-set is that parasites act as individuals and that tissue specificity is largely dictated by receptor-ligand interactions between pathogen and host surface molecules. However, parasites are more autonomous and manipulative than we give them credit for. I propose that self-steering, a mechanism by which groups of cells migrate in response to gradients that they create and/or modify, is central to their ability to orient themselves and home into host tissues.  Trypanosoma brucei, which causes sleeping sickness, cycles between mammals and tsetse flies. Trypanosomes lack G-protein coupled receptors (GPCR) and heterotrimeric G proteins, which act as sensors and signal transducers in yeast and multicellular eukaryotes, but encode a large number of receptor adenylate cyclases. We recently discovered that trypanosomes generate pH gradients on semi-solid surfaces and use cyclic AMP (cAMP) signalling to move collectively in response to them. This correlates with their ability to cross barriers and sequentially colonise organs in tsetse flies. Our newest findings that trypanosomes respond chemotactically to other metabolites, together with evidence from several laboratories that T. brucei is not restricted to the blood and central nervous system in mammals, but also invades other organs, are the focus of this project.  My objectives are: • to elucidate the intracellular mechanism of cAMP-mediated pH sensing • to explore other cues for chemotaxis and determine how signals are transduced • to establish whether the expanded family of adenylate cyclase genes in T. brucei plays a role in extravasation and colonisation of different organs in mammalian hosts.  This is the first, comprehensive analysis of the mechanisms governing directed migration by a parasite and is a paradigm for new forms of sensing in eukaryotes lacking GPCR.

Mots-clés : trypanosome stage specific parasite social motility chemotaxis sensing cyclic amp signalling organ tropism
Projet ERC : MISSINGMARKETS (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : Individuals, Markets and Organisations
Entité participante : université catholique du Sacré-Cœur — Pays : Italie — Rôle : Partner
Acronyme de l'entité : UCSC
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 146250.0 €

Half of the world's extreme poor – or over 430 million people – live in Sub-Saharan Africa. The vast majority live in rural areas and work in agriculture, where productivity is desperately low. This keeps welfare low now – and in the future – as agricultural productivity increases are seen as a condition for both structural transformation and to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. This is the motivation for bringing the green revolution – which has so far bypassed the continent – to Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the logic being compelling, the results from a decade of research on technology adoption in African agriculture have been largely disappointing. Interventions aimed at increasing farmers ability to invest in inputs to produce more of what they already do have not proven transformative. In this research proposal, I will investigate a complementary explanation why income and productivity in African agriculture remain low: it is what farmers produce – precisely the quality and value added of their output – that keeps them poor, and they produce low quality because there is no demand for smallholders to produce high quality or higher value-added outputs. As low quality limits price and thus farmers' potential income, missing markets for quality can help explain the low returns to farming. At the core of this research proposal is the hypothesis that markets for quality are missing because of a fundamental information problem: quality is a difficult to observe characteristic. I will rely on three multi-wave randomized controlled field trials to study technological and institutional solutions to overcome this information problem, which hamper demand for high quality products in the export market (work package I) and at home (work package II). In the final work package, I will complete the cycle and study how increases in demand for high quality outputs, and access to high quality inputs, can jump-start a green revolution in rural Africa.
Projet ERC : MERAS (Horizon Europe, appel 2021, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Max Delbrück Center — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : MDC
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499999.0 €

To adapt cardiac function in response to mechanical load, a network of splice factors concertedly regulates multiple target mRNAs that affect biomechanics, electrical activity, metabolism, signaling, and growth. It includes the splice regulator RBM20, with mutations causing severe cardiomyopathy, as well as its substrate titin, whose >350 exons are differentially joined to adjust the elastic properties of the sarcomere and thus ventricular filling. In the spliceosome, diverse RNAs and RNA binding proteins interact in macromolecular complexes, but how their activity is regulated to adapt cardiac isoform expression and sarcomere mechanics has remained elusive. We have adapted localization proteomics to study macromolecular complexes in vivo at physiological expression levels, which has previously not been possible. Our titin-BioID knock-in mice have provided the first census of the sarcomeric proteome and uncovered a previously unknown connection between sarcomeric mechanotransduction and mRNA processing in the nucleus. This unexpected link is the basis of our hypothesis that altered strain of the titin filament is communicated to the nucleus where the spliceosome adapts titin isoform expression to adjust sarcomere elasticity. This proposed regulatory feedback loop would elegantly resolve the question of how sarcomeres adapt to mechanical load. Here, we will explore how the mechanoregulation of cardiac splicing contributes to heart disease in a functional multi-omics approach and develop technologies that combine single cell isoform sequencing and mechanics to examine how heterogeneity of the mechanical microenvironment determines isoform expression in the individual cardiomyocyte. The overall scientific goal of the proposed work is to investigate the functional interaction of two macromolecular machines – the sarcomere and the spliceosome – and to evaluate mechanotransduction as a potential therapeutic target in heart failure with increased ventricular stiffness.

Mots-clés : mechanotransduction,alternative splicing,biomechanics,sarcomere,localization proteomics,single cell multi omics,phenomics,heart disease
Projet ERC : KnotSurf4d (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Mathematics
Entité participante : Institut de recherches mathématiques Alfréd-Rényi — Pays : Hongrie — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 1991875.0 €

Four-dimensional smooth manifolds show very different behaviour than manifolds in any other dimension. In fact, in other dimensions we have a somewhat clear picture of the classification, while dimension four is still elusive. The project aims to further our knowledge in this question in several ways. The genus function, and its enhanced version taking knots and their slice surfaces into account, plays a crucial role in understanding different smooth structures on four-manifolds. Techniques for studying these objects range from topological and symplectic/algebraic geometric (on the constructive side) to algebraic and analytic methods resting on specific PDE’s and on counting their solutions (on the obstructive side). The proposal aims to study several interrelated questions in this area. We plan to construct further exotic structures, detect and better understand their exoticness. In doing so, we put strong emphasis on knots and their slice properties in various four-manifolds. Ultimately we provide a candidate for an invariant, which is a smooth (and somewhat complicated) generalization of the intersection form, and we expect this generalization to characterize smooth four-manifolds. The novelty in this approach is the incorporation of knots and their slice surfaces in a significant and organized manner into the picture. While it provides a refined tool in general, this approach also touches classical aspects of four-manifold topology through the study of the concordance group. We plan to study divisibility and torsion questions in this group via knot Floer homology. Definition of the concordance group rests on the concept of slice knots, which is closely related to the ribbon construction. We plan to further study potential counterexamples for the famous Slice-Ribbon conjecture. The proposed problems can also provide explanations of the special behaviour of four-manifolds with definite intersection forms, like the four-sphere and the complex projective plane.

Mots-clés : smooth four manifolds,knot theory,slice knots,four dimensional poincar conjecture,ribbon knots
Projet ERC : CALIX (Horizon Europe, appel 2024, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Physical Sciences and Engineering
Panel : Earth System Science
Entité participante : Université de St Andrews — Pays : Royaume-Uni — Rôle : PI
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2173737.25 €

Global sea levels will continue to rise as ice sheets shrink in response to climate change, but predictions vary widely on how much ice will be lost in different carbon futures. The single largest source of uncertainty is iceberg calving rates. Calving can cause more rapid ice loss than any other process, but no reliable method currently exists for representing calving in numerical models. CALIX seeks to find and apply the elusive universal calving law, by adopting a radical new approach based on the self-organising nature of glacier systems. The calving law will be formulated using bulk statistical properties of calving events, and will be rooted in both detailed observations and sound theory. The calving law will be implemented in leading ice-sheet models, throughly tested, and used in model run ensembles to determine the most-probable Antarctic Ice Sheet contribution to sea level into the 22nd Century under different mitigation and business-as-usual carbon scenarios. CALIX will address a major knowledge gap in glacier science, and will revolutionise our ability to understand ice-sheet stability, predict ice-sheet response to climate change and anticipate the global consequences.

Mots-clés : ice sheet model,iceberg calving,calving law,greenland,antarctic ice sheet
Projet ERC : NO PRESSURE (Horizon Europe, appel 2022, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Entité participante : Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : UKE
Type d'entité : Enseignement supérieur ou secondaire
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2499927.0 €

NO PRESSURE will address the hypothesis that intermittent hypoxaemia is a major driver of the pulmonary pathophysiology and the systemic co-morbidity that is present at a sub-clinical level already in early disease stages of a significant sub-group of COPD patients with a high risk of rapidly declining lung function and poor prognosis. The project has been conceptualized to achieve ground-breaking scientific insight into the role of intermittent hypoxaemia as a driver of COPD progression and outcome via dysfunction of the L-arginine-ADMA-NO pathway. Its five work packages will span from molecular regulation of the pulmonary L-arginine-ADMA-NO pathway in hypoxia to cellular oxygen sensing and signal transduction mechanisms, via translational studies in genetically modified mouse models and genotyped healthy humans, to clinical proof-of-concept studies of exercise-induced, intermittent hypoxaemia as a diagnostic indicator to identify a subgroup of high-risk COPD patients and the ability to therapeutically intervene by pharmacological modification of the L arginine-ADMA-NO pathway.  Combining state-of-the-art molecular biology techniques, specifically designed genetically engineered animal models, and translation of the obtained results into genomically characterized humans who will be exposed to hypoxia, NO PRESSURE will achieve a unique level of depth in our understanding of the molecular pathophysiology of the lung’s response to hypoxia with proven relevance to human biology. Beyond this, NO PRESSURE will take the step towards validation of pathophysiologically proven biomarkers and, thus, molecular mechanisms in the world’s unique long-term prospective cohort for lung disease. In addition, it will deliver unequivocal evidence for clinical utility in two small, but well defined COPD patient cohorts, with one having a focus on prognostic relevance and the other one opening the avenue towards future pharmacotherapeutic intervention to improve prognosis.

Mots-clés : hypoxic gene expression nitric oxide adma asymmetric dimethylarginine oxygen sensing exertional hypoxaemia biomarker
Projet ERC : PlaMitEng (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Life Science
Panel : Biotechnology and Biosystems E ngineering
Entité participante : Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Société Max Planck
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2500000.0 €

PlaMitEng has the highly ambitious overall objective to make the mitochondrial genome of seed plants amenable to genetic engineering. The project consists of two complementary work packages (WPs). In WP1, TALEN-GDM, a technology for plant mitochondrial genome editing recently developed by us will be used to systematically study plant mitochondrial gene expression in vivo. The focus will be on translation initiation and translational regulation in mitochondria, the mechanisms of which are currently completely unknown. In WP2, PlaMitEng will develop a technology for direct genetic transformation of the plant mitochondrial genome. The mitochondrial genome is the only genome of the plant cell that, due to the lack of a mitochondrion-specific selection system, is not amenable to transformation and has remained recalcitrant to the insertion and expression of transgenes. Taking advantage of (i) our recent construction of a mitochondrion-specific selectable marker gene, (ii) the generation of a dedicated recipient line for mitochondrial transformation, and (iii) the design of a new transformation strategy (referred to as multivectorial transformation) that will enable the large-scale testing of expression elements for their suitability to drive the expression of mitochondrial transgenes in vivo, PlaMitEng will pursue the development of a robust technology for transformation of the plant mitochondrial genome. The possibility to express transgenes from plant mitochondrial genomes will open up entirely new opportunities in both basic and applied research, and pave the way to harnessing the enormous potential of mitochondrial biotechnology and synthetic biology.

Mots-clés : mitochondrion translation translational regulation plant transformation
Projet ERC : ROAMANCE (Horizon Europe, appel 2023, Advanced grants)
Domaine scientifique : Social Sciences and Humanities
Panel : The Study of the Human Past
Entité participante : Société Max-Planck pour le développement des sciences — Pays : Allemagne — Rôle : PI
Acronyme de l'entité : Société Max Planck
Type d'entité : Recherche
Financement ERC de l'entité : 2496811.0 €

Kinship systems and networks of contact and exchange in prehistoric societies could so far only be studied indirectly. Recent advances in archaeogenetics have enabled the retrieval of ancient genomic data with high success rates, which often allows the study of nearly all individuals from the same archaeological site, making intra-site studies become reality. Estimating degrees of biological relatedness and demonstrating biological unrelatedness can form a robust scaffold to reconstruct social and kin relations, which permit stable inferences on kinship structures and social organisation in prehistoric societies. Further analytical advances that estimate shared identity-by-descent between individuals can identify biological relatives up to the 10th degree, which has enabled the detection of distant relatives between different sites. Many such connections across sites and regions can be found in the published ancient human genomes from Europe’s prehistory, and the chances to find more scales up quadratically with the number of individuals studied. Through full integration of archaeological, anthropological, isotopic and other context data, it will for the first time be possible to match levels of resolution in archaeology and genetics, to map relationships over geographic distances, and to learn how prehistoric communities were organised, interacted and formed networks. Given these exciting prospects, this project will enhance the data density in Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe by including new well-contextualised sites and regions at our disposal with the aim to build comprehensive maps of contact, trade and exchange based on quantifiable and statistically robust measures. This unique, large-scale, spatio-temporal reference dataset will allow us to use innovative integrated modelling approaches that explore theoretical frameworks and kinship models from ethnographic studies, and to produce novel insights into the evolution and structures of human societies.

Mots-clés : ancient human dna,migration,mobility,biological relatedness,kinship,social organisation,prehistory