Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Rectifying interfaces for solar driven fuel synthesis (INTERSOLAR)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Materials and Synthesis
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2011-ADG_20110209, 2011)
Start date: 2012-04-01
End date: 2018-03-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1800000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1800000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

There is rapidly growing interest in the science required to enable the conversion of solar energy into molecular fuels, motivated both by the need to develop a renewable, globally scalable transportation fuel strategy and the need to address the intermittency limitations of solar electrical power generation. Rapid progress is being made in the fabrication of inorganic, low cost, nanostructured photoelectrodes which utilise visible irradiation for such fuel syntheses, including water photolysis and CO2 photoreduction. However the efficiency of low cost photoelectrodes remains modest, due significantly to electron / hole recombination in the photoelectrode competing effectively with interfacial photochemistry. I propose to address this limitation by the use of multilayer interfaces designed to achieve enhanced uni-directional (i.e.: rectifying) charge separation, building directly from the extensive lessons I have learnt from my studies addressing an analogous challenge in dye sensitized solar cells. A key focus will be on the functionalisation of photoelectrodes with molecular and/or inorganic multi-electron catalysts to enhance the specificity and efficiency of the photoelectrode for fuel synthesis, exploiting recent, rapid advances in the syntheses of such catalysts. The use of rectifying interfaces is essential for the encorporation of such catalysts onto photoelectrodes, enabling the accumulation of multiple oxidations on the catalyst without this accumulation resulting in enhanced recombination losses. The proposal will undertake the assembly of such multilayer photoelectrodes, utlilising state of the art photoelectrode and catalyst materials, and the functional characterisation of these photoelectrodes, including measurement of interfacial electron transfer dynamics, with the aim of developing materials design rules which will enable systematic optimisation of photoelectrode function for efficient solar driven fuel synthesis.

Keywords: solar energy,solar fuels,photocatalysis
Counting conjectures and characters of almost simple groups (COUNTING CONJECTURES)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Mathematical foundations
Countries involved: Germany
Call:  (ERC-2011-ADG_20110209, 2011)
Start date: 2012-04-01
End date: 2017-03-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1444200.0
EU funding (EUR): 1444200.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This proposal has two major goals: to understand the irreducible complex characters of the finite almost simple groups, and to apply this knowledge to prove two longstanding famous conjectures in the representation theory of finite groups: the McKay conjecture and the Alperin Weight Conjecture. The first goal requires the study of the action of outer automorphisms of finite groups of Lie type on their irreducible characters and the solution of extension problems. The determination of the irreducible characters of all almost simple groups is a fundamental task of group theory. For the second goal, we will build on the recent reductions (by the PI and others) of both conjectures to assertions on characters of finite simple groups. To prove these assertions, one needs to construct certain equivariant bijections with respect to outer automorphisms, which will involve the results from the first goal. Furthermore, we propose to extend the reduction of the McKay conjecture to include several refinements, in particular the block-wise version and congruences of character degrees. The project will involve the interplay of methods from the theory of algebraic groups, character sheaves, block theory and modular character theory.

Keywords: character theory of finite groups,mckay conjecture,alperin weight conjecture,brauer height zero conjecture,representations of almost simple groups,deligne-lusztig theory
Reasoning About Computational Economies (RACE)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Computer science and informatics
Countries involved: United Kingdom,United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2011-ADG_20110209, 2011)
Start date: 2012-06-01
End date: 2018-05-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2129617.0
EU funding (EUR): 2129617.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

The aim of this project is to develop, apply, and evaluate RACE: a robust and practical model checking tool for use in the formal specification, verification, and analysis of computational economies – computer systems in which system components are assumed to have their own goals/preferences about the overall behaviour of the system, and where these system components are assumed to behave selfishly and strategically in the furtherance of their goals/preferences. The key deliverables of the project will of course include the RACE system itself, and in addition: new formalisms for representing and reasoning about computational economies, suitable for use in the RACE system and elsewhere; theoretical results (e.g., complexity analyses, axiom systems, . . . ) relating to the use of these formalisms; new algorithms and data structures for the verification and analysis of computational economies; and a library of case studies, demonstrating the use of RACE in a variety of settings. The project is both timely and essential. It is timely because computer networks populated by multiple self-interested computational entities are increasingly the reality of computing in the 21st century, and as a consequence, research in this area has witnessed a huge explosion of interest recently. It is essential because current formalisms, tools, and techniques for the specification, analysis, and verification of systems were not intended for, and are not appropriate for, this emerging reality. The project will build on two decades of enormously influential research by the PI, who is among the most highly cited researchers in computer science and artificial intelligence today.

Keywords: multi-agent systems,model checking
Tropical forests in the changing earth system (T-FORCES)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Earth system science
Countries involved: United Kingdom,United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2011-ADG_20110209, 2011)
Start date: 2012-07-01
End date: 2018-06-30
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 2500000.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

The ambition of this proposal is to determine, from the ground up, the changing role of tropical forests in the global carbon cycle. The scientific objectives are: (1) Determine the trajectory of change in remaining tropical forests, (2) Unravel the drivers of change, (3) Gauge the sensitivity of forests to the climate change threat, and (4) Scale the findings to the present and future earth system. The 5-yr interdisciplinary research project led by Oliver Phillips will construct a Pan-Tropical Observatory of Forest Function, using this to reveal the transient and long-term forest response to global change. In Asia, Africa, Australia, and South America, T-FORCES will direct long-term on-the-ground observations of forest dynamics, and integrate them with complementary approaches including high frequency measurement of the climate-sensitivities of different components of the carbon cycle, and full analysis of forest climate, landscape, and ecology. The huge scale of the tropical forest biome will be used to develop a series of natural experiments: *Within continents, gradients of climate, soil, and disturbance will be sampled to explore current, transient responses and to scale-up in space and time. *Six elevational gradients will provide replicates to reveal the equilibrium sensitivities of tropical carbon cycle processes to temperature. *By working across four tropical continents each provides independent tests to distinguish between change drivers that may be regional (eg Amazon drought) or global (eg CO2 fertilisation) in nature. T-FORCES will transform scientific understanding of tropical forests in the global carbon cycle, by revealing the key patterns, impacts and processes so far, the threat to forests from global change, and the risk that forests will magnify those changes. The Pan-Tropical Observatory of Forest Function will provide the global science community with the baseline and framework to investigate the processes involved throughout our century.

Keywords: carbon global environmental change biodiversity functional change biospheric feedbacks
Beam-steered Reconfigurable Optical-Wireless System for Energy-efficient communication (BROWSE)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Systems and communication engineering
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call:  (ERC-2011-ADG_20110209, 2011)
Start date: 2012-09-01
End date: 2017-12-31
Duration (months): 64.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2430352.8
EU funding (EUR): 2430352.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The exploding need for wireless communication capacity is getting beyond the capabilities of traditional radio techniques. The available radio bandwidth gets exhausted, wireless devices start interfering with each other in this overcrowded radio spectrum, and high-capacity radio is power-hungry. Optics can offer a breakthrough, by means of the huge bandwidth of its spectrum, together with intelligent networking. Our ambition is to make a giant step forward in wireless communications, by a revolutionary combination of novel free-space optical beam diversity techniques, an intelligently routed optical fibre platform, and flexible radio communication techniques. This hybrid technology will increase the available wireless bandwidth by several orders of magnitude, while operating very energy-efficiently. We will investigate the use of narrowly confined optical pencil beams aided by optical beam tracking for the downstream part of the communication channel, and radio technology for upstream. The optical beams allow extremely high data rates (10-100 Gbit/s) as their carrier frequency is orders of magnitude larger than that of radio waves, and can serve many users without interference due to their spatial confinement. Moreover, they reduce the power consumption by their excellent directivity. In the (less demanding) upstream path, we will explore low-power highly-integrated radio technology for offering capacities of 3-30 Gbit/s. We combine these with intelligent optical routing techniques in the fibre backbone network, and with user localisation and tracking capabilities using advanced upstream radio techniques, in order to deliver ultra-broadband services to every user, tailored for his device. We will explore an autonomic network management and control system to orchestrate the heterogeneous resources and evolve these as the user’s needs, context, device capabilities and energy requirements change.
TransCure - International Fellowship Program on Translational Research (IFP TRANSCURE)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Co-funding of regional, national and international programmes
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Switzerland
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-COFUND, 2011)
Start date: 2012-05-01
End date: 2017-04-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 6438522.0
EU funding (EUR): 2575408.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The herein proposed International Fellowship Program will be integrated into the recently funded Swiss translational research program, the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) TransCure, a joint research effort of 28 academic research groups located in major Swiss universities. The aim of the NCCR TransCure is to improve prevention and treatment of chronic diseases such as cancer, osteoporosis, neurodegenerative diseases, heart diseases, etc. Recent progresses in biomedical research have revealed that the dysfunction of specific membrane proteins contributes to the pathogenesis of these diseases. NCCR TransCure aims at studying the function of implicated membrane proteins and developing innovative drugs that control them in the diseased state. Membrane transport proteins and ion channels are particularly important pharmaceutical targets as they are the gatekeepers of the membranes of cells and cell organelles. In particular, they control the uptake and efflux of vital substances such as sugars, vitamins, trace elements, signal molecules and drugs. Targeting these proteins has been rather neglected yet by the pharmaceutical industry due to their structural complexity and hydrophobic nature. Thus, these proteins represent a large and unexplored pharmaceutical wealth. The TransCure premise is that integration of medicine, structural biology and chemistry will be tremendously beneficial in accelerating the translational avenue from "gene to drug". The future success of translational research in Europe depends on well-trained and multidisciplinary-oriented young researchers. The Swiss interdisciplinary TransCure research network represents the ideal platform for the training of such researchers from Europe and all over the world. Therefore, an integration of this COFUND IFP into TransCure will provide Europe with the long-sought "next generation biomedical scientists", necessary for the development of the "next generation therapeutic drugs" in the future.

Keywords: natural sciences,transcure,translational research,biomedical research,interdisciplinary research,membrane proteins,transporters,channels,drug discovery,chronic disease,cancer,nccr
TUM-IAS Fellowships for the cooperative development of high risk new fields in technology and science (RISKINGCREATIVITY)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Co-funding of regional, national and international programmes
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Germany
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-COFUND, 2011)
Start date: 2012-11-25
End date: 2018-12-24
Duration (months): 73.0
Total project cost (EUR): 12647688.9
EU funding (EUR): 5059075.56
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The Institute for Advanced Study of the “Technische Universität München” (TUM-IAS) is awarding what it calls Hans Fischer, Carl von Linde and Rudolf Diesel Fellowships to outstanding external Senior and Junior scientists, in order to promote the development of advanced new ideas in technology and science, offering its uniquely productive environment as an embedding for the endeavors. This Fellowship program, which was already present in the charter of the Institute when it was created (in 2005), conforms almost seamlessly with the goals and aims of the COFUND program. Granting of a Fellowship is entirely based on the personal excellence of the external researcher. Hans Fischer Fellows remain members of their own institution with a partial residence commitment to Munich ranging over three years, while Carl von Linde Fellows become employees of TUM for a period of three years. In both categories there is a "senior" and a "junior" variety, where the junior Fellowships aim especially at the development of an advanced pool of young and promising researchers, who, after their Fellowship, would become strong candidates for Professorships or Research positions all over Europe. Rudolf Diesel Fellows are researchers from industry, who aim at the unconstrained development of a promising new idea. The Institute has on a continual basis around 45 Fellows active, with some 30 Hosts and around 50 Doctoral Candidates and Postdocs directly financed from the Fellowship program (there are many more through other third-party projects acquired by our Focus Groups). A net increase of 25% of the existing program is proposed, together with a new international constituent. Such expansion would not only advance "high-risk, high reward" innovation across disciplinary, institutional, national, and generational boundaries. It also would strongly enhance development of the future talent pool available to the European Research Area.

Keywords: high-risk,high-reward fellowships,outstanding international senior and junior scientists.fellowships in technology and science.
COFUNDing of the CERN Fellowship Programme 2011 (COFUND-CERN-2011)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Co-funding of regional, national and international programmes
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: Switzerland
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-COFUND, 2011)
Start date: 2012-10-01
End date: 2017-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 24999245.7
EU funding (EUR): 9999698.28
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

For many years, CERN has operated a trans-national Fellowship programme, offering scientists and engineers challenging opportunities in particle physics research, and in related fields of physics and technology. CERN secured COFUND grants in 2008 and 2010. They offer CERN a timely opportunity to enhance the mobility element of this programme without nationality limitations. The 2011 Call comes at a time when the startup of the Large Hadron Collider has made CERN one of the most exciting places to work for the global physics and technology community. Applicants will propose their own research projects. Selection will be based on the scientific potential of the proposal, and on the demonstrated excellence of the candidate. Working on frontier research and technology projects and profiting from the unique facilities available at CERN, the co-funded Fellows will deepen their knowledge in their own field and acquire international visibility and reputation. They will broaden their skills using the numerous training opportunities and through their exposure to an interdisciplinary and multi-national environment. Inter-sectorial skills will be fostered through CERN’s industrial collaborations and technology transfer projects. Employment conditions will be improved by offering three-year appointments rather than the standard two-year terms of CERN Fellows. At least two of these three years will be spent at CERN. We consider this provision to be justified by the size of the Laboratory, the diversity of the research and training opportunities, and by the uniqueness of CERN’s facilities. However, mobility will be enhanced through the opportunity to spend up to one third of the Fellowship in external institutions, including industrial laboratories. These improvements, enabled by the COFUND action, will further increase the competitiveness of CERN’s Fellowship Programme.

Keywords: physical sciences,engineering,information technology,training
The Genetic Basis and Adaptive Significance of Natural Ionomic Variation (IONOMIC VARIATION)

Framework: FP7 — People
Programme: Marie-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Life-long training and career development
Action type: Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (FP7-PEOPLE-2011-CIG, 2011)
Start date: 2011-09-01
End date: 2015-08-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 100000.0
EU funding (EUR): 100000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Evolutionary forces are known to drive the fixation of locally adaptive genetic variation within populations, and plants provide an excellent model for investigations into its genetic origins, maintenance and adaptive significance. We aim to take advantage of the natural genetic variation that occurs between populations of the genetic model plant Arabidopsis thaliana to identify gene functions that vary between these natural populations. Such a set of polymorphic genes and gene functions will provide the essential tools required to uncover the genetic mechanisms that drive the fixation of locally adaptive genetic variation within a population. To link natural genetic variation to function, we have applied high-throughput Inductively Coupled Plasma – Mass Spectroscopy (ICP-MS) based elemental-profiling, in combination with genome-wide association mapping and traditional linkage mapping to reveal loci that drive natural variation in the plant's elemental-profile or “ionome” including P, Ca, K, Mg (macronutrients); Cu, Fe, Zn, Mn, Co, Ni, Se, Mo, I (micronutrients of significance to plant and human health); Na, As, and Cd (minerals causing agricultural or environmental problems). Using a combination of laboratory and field-based experiments we propose to uncover the adaptive benefit and evolutionary significance of these naturally occurring polymorphic ionomic loci, along with their molecular function, and underlying causal genetic and epigenetic basis. This information will help determine the evolutionary processes involved in adaptation of organisms to local environments. Such insights will help in predicting the extent and limits of possible future adaptations of plants to changes in the surface chemistry of the Earth driven by a changing global climate, and will have applications to optimizing the mineral content of food crops for improved human health. After all, plants provide the major source of nutrition for a large portion of the world’s population.

Keywords: natural sciences,genomics,arabidopsis,local adaptation,natural variation,edaphic,mineral nutrition,ionome,trace elements,ion transport