Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
inVEST: Foundations for a Shift from Verification to Synthesis (INVEST)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Computer science and informatics
Countries involved: Belgium
Call:  (ERC-2011-StG_20101014, 2011)
Start date: 2012-01-01
End date: 2017-09-30
Duration (months): 69.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1415255.4
EU funding (EUR): 1415255.4
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Reactive systems are computer systems that maintain a continuous interaction with the environment in which they execute. Examples of reactive systems are controllers embedded in cars or planes, system level software, device drivers, communication protocols, etc. On the one hand, those systems are notoriously difficult to develop correctly (because of characteristics like concurrency, real-time constraints, parallelism, etc). And on the other hand, their correctness is often critical as they are used in contexts where safety is an issue, or because of economical reasons related to mass production. To ensure reliability of reactive systems, advanced verification techniques have been developed. One particularly successful approach is model-checking. Nevertheless, model-checking is used to find bugs in designs but it does not support the design itself. In this project, we want to develop new algorithms and tools to support the automatic synthesis of modern reactive systems (instead of their verification a posteriori). We aim at a shift from verification to synthesis. To allow this shift, we need new foundations: we propose to generalize transition systems and automata – models of computation in the classical approach to verification – by the more flexible, and mathematically deeper, game-theoretic framework. Our work will be of fundamental nature but will also aim at the development of algorithms and tools. Those new foundations will allow for the development of a new generation of computer-aided design tools that will support the automatic synthesis of modern reactive systems and ensure correctness by construction.

Keywords: computer-aided verification,model-checking,automatic synthesis,reactive systems,automata theory,temporal logics,game theory,solution concepts,mechanism design
Compound Specific Hydrogen Isotope Analyses of Leaf Wax n-Alkanes as a Novel Tool to Assess Plant and Ecosystem Water Relations Across new Spatial and Temporal Scales (COSIWAX)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Earth system science
Countries involved: Switzerland
Call:  (ERC-2011-StG_20101014, 2011)
Start date: 2011-10-01
End date: 2016-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1496341.59
EU funding (EUR): 1496341.59
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

Leaf wax n-alkanes are long-chained lipids that are vital components of plant cuticles. What makes leaf wax n-alkanes unique is that their stable hydrogen isotope composition (δD) contains information on precipitation and plant water relations. In addition, leaf wax n-alkanes are abundant in leaves, soils, sediments and even the atmosphere and can persist with their δD values over millions of years. With this exceptional combination of properties, leaf wax n-alkanes and their δD values are now being celebrated as the much-needed ecohydrological proxy that provides information on the hydrological cycle and plant water relations across spatial and temporal scales that range from leaves to biomes and from weeks to millions of years. Despite the enormous potential that leaf wax n-alkanes have as ecohydrological proxy for a range of different research areas, the exact type of hydrological information that is recorded in the δD values of leaf wax n-alkanes remains still unclear. This is because critical mechanisms that determine the δD values of leaf wax n-alkanes are not understood. This proposal will perform the experimental work that is now needed to resolve the key mechanisms that determine the δD values leaf wax n-alkanes. These experiments will set the basis to develop a new numerical model that will allow to ultimately test what the exact hydrological signal is that leaf wax n-alkanes record in their δD values: a mere hydrological signal reflecting the amount or origin of precipitation or, a plant-shaped signal indicating plant water relations such as evapotranspiration. Building on this new model, COSIWAX will set out to test the potential that leaf wax n-alkane δD values hold as new ecohydrological proxy for ecology and ecosystem sciences. If successful, COSIWAX will establish with this research leaf wax n-alkanes δD values as a new and innovative ecohydrological proxy that has extensive possible applications in paleoclimatology, ecology, earth system sciences.

Keywords: stable isotopes
Towards more efficient materials for technological processes (RASPA)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Products and process engineering
Countries involved: Spain
Call:  (ERC-2011-StG_20101014, 2011)
Start date: 2012-01-01
End date: 2016-12-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1369080.0
EU funding (EUR): 1369080.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

With the increasing need for efficient, energy-saving, and environmentally friendly procedures, adsorbents with tailored structures and tunable surface properties have to be found. To make an informed choice of material for a given application, one must first have knowledge of its adsorption behaviour as a function of molecular composition and morphology. My aim is to provide new insights for material design with a computational investigation of adsorption and diffusion processes in porous materials. As adsorbents I will focus on zeolites because of their high stability and on MOFs because of their structural diversity and versatility. As adsorbates I am interested on chiral molecules such as ibuprofen or limonene (separation of chiral enantiomers), volatile organic compounds –VOCs- (control of VOCs emissions from industrial processes), water, alcohols (solvent dehydration), carbon dioxide and methane (production of cheap and clean fuel from natural gas). The central focus of this research is that computer simulations can be used not only as a screening tool for known structures, but they can also provide structural design guides even before experimental synthesis. My approach is to perform a classical simulation study to identify the effect of the geometry and the chemical composition of the material on storage/release of molecules and on separation of mixtures. The fundamental information that I am planning to obtain from this study will provide the underlying knowledge from a molecular point of view that may guide to the development of more efficient processes, to fine-tune materials for a particular application and also to steer the experimental effort in successful directions.

Keywords: molecular simulations,zeolites,metal organic frameworks,adsorption,diffuison,industrial applications,force field development,material design
Integrated Analysis & Design in Nonlinear Dynamics (INNODYN)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Products and process engineering
Countries involved: Denmark
Call:  (ERC-2011-StG_20101014, 2011)
Start date: 2012-02-01
End date: 2016-01-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 823992.41
EU funding (EUR): 823992.41
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Imagine lighter and more fuel economic cars with improved crashworthiness that help save lives, aircrafts and wind-turbine blades with significant weight reductions that lead to large savings in material costs and environmental impact, and light but efficient armour that helps to protect against potentially deadly blasts. These are the future perspectives with a new generation of advanced structures and micro-structured materials. The goal of INNODYN is to bring current design procedures for structures and materials a significant step forward by developing new efficient procedures for integrated analysis and design taking the nonlinear dynamic performance into account. The assessment of nonlinear dynamic effects is essential for fully exploiting the vast potentials of structural and material capabilities, but a focused endeavour is strongly required to develop the methodology required to reach the ambitious goals. INNODYN will in two interacting work-packages develop the necessary computational analysis and design tools using 1) reduced-order models (WP1) that enable optimization of the overall topology of structures which is today hindered by excessive computational costs when dealing with nonlinear dynamic systems 2) multi-scale models (WP2) that facilitates topological design of the material microstructure including essential nonlinear geometrical effects currently not included in state-of-the-art methods. The work will be carried out by a research group with two PhD-students and a postdoc, led by a PI with a track-record for original ground-breaking research in analysis and optimization of linear and nonlinear dynamics and hosted by one of the world's leading research groups on topology optimization, the TOPOPT group at the Technical University of Denmark.

Keywords: nonlinear dynamics,multi-scale models,reduced-order models,topology optimization
Hot and dense QCD in the LHC era (HOTLHC)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Fundamental constituents of matter
Countries involved: Spain,Switzerland
Call:  (ERC-2011-StG_20101014, 2011)
Start date: 2012-01-01
End date: 2017-12-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1379376.0
EU funding (EUR): 1379376.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

QCD, the theory of strong interactions, has been defined as our most perfect physical theory, in part because its compact and apparently simple Lagrangian hides a plethora of emerging phenomena. The aim of the present project is to make the essential contributions to fully exploit the new possibilities of the Large Hadron Collider to characterise unexplored domains of QCD. Three main working plans are foreseen: i) The partonic structure of the protons and nuclei at LHC energies, where I plan to unravel the structure at small fraction of momentum of the colliding objects, characterising new regimes of QCD at high parton densities; ii) A new theory of jets in a medium, in which a new way of understanding the phenomenon of parton branching of a quark or gluon in a medium, including new evolution equations is proposed; iii) A Monte Carlo for jet quenching, where the solid theoretical framework developed in the previous point will be implemented into a Monte Carlo code for general use. Along these working plans, two horizontal lines - Talking to the experiment: finding the signatures; and Talking to other fields - will ensure the coherence of the project and the communication of the results as well as the collaboration with external researchers, especially experimentalist. In order to fulfil these ambitious goals, the research team will need of reinforcement in terms of (wo)manpower and travel and computer resources. The total requested contribution from the ERC-StG to the project is 1.499.376 Euros, which is divided as follows: 39% for postdocs; 18% for PhD students; 12% for visits to CERN; 10% for the PI salary; 8% for travel; 8% for computers and 4% for visitors.

Keywords: large hadron collider,heavy-ions,qcd
Organic/inorganic hybrids for solution-processable photonic structures (OASIS)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Materials and Synthesis
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2011-StG_20101014, 2011)
Start date: 2011-10-01
End date: 2016-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1242478.0
EU funding (EUR): 1242478.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The realisation that modulated light pulses can be confined over long distances with minimum losses within a structure that comprises a controlled spatial distribution of the refractive index n – as, e.g. in optical fibres – has, without doubt, underpinned the telecommunications revolution witnessed during the 20th century. The refractive index n, quantifying how light propagates in a given medium, has as a consequence become one of the most important materials properties in designing photonics products. The other key information for most optical and photonic applications is to know how much light is absorbed by a material. This is described by the extinction coefficient κ. There is, though, an apparent lack of solution-processable systems of κ close to 0 (i.e. are transparent) whilst n can be manipulated over a broad window – a bottleneck that has rendered fabrication of a range of optical structures impracticable, if not impossible. Here we address this issue and advance versatile, solution-processable polymer/inorganic hybrids whose refractive index n can be tuned over a wide range without compromising their transparency nor processability. The programme will develop in three directions: i) the design of novel, solution-processable molecular hybrids; ii) the development of (nano-)fabrication technologies for the deposition and/or patterning of such hybrids; and iii) extension of the range of currently explored photonic crystals to entirely new optical devices. Hence, we have identified a clear need for new materials with increased optical functionalities, and novel concepts and approaches that will allow simple fabrication of structures to light. Key objective for the proposed programme thus is to advance new hybrids, develop a deeper understanding of key structure-property interrelationships of inorganic/organic hybrids and develop novel photonic architectures.

Keywords: inorganic/organic hybrids,photonics,solution-processing,amoprhous titania,titanium oxide hydrates,poly(vinyl alcohol),1- to 3d photonic crystals
Tailoring Mixed-Metal Chemistry for Frontier Synthetic and Catalytic Applications (MIXMETAPPS)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Materials and Synthesis
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2011-StG_20101014, 2011)
Start date: 2011-10-01
End date: 2017-03-31
Duration (months): 66.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1497180.1
EU funding (EUR): 1497180.1
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Designed to meet many of the colossal challenges facing synthetic and organometallic chemists as demanded by current societal, environmental and economic issues, this project will accelerate the development of a innovative mixed-metal chemistry, which combines two metals with markedly different polarities in the same molecule. Initially polar Mg and non-polar Zn “hybrids” will be developed followed by other metal pairs. These hybrids will exhibit a unique chemistry distinct to those of their parent monometallic compounds. Building on our recent pioneering work in this area (PNAS 2010, JACS 2010) that uses a tried and tested metal-structural-inorganic approach that allows rationale design of tailor-made mixed-metal reagents, this novel and ambitious research programme will deliver new chemo- and regioselective organobimetallic reagents designed as transformational tools for a broad spectrum of fundamentally important chemical reactions (deprotonation, metal-halogen exchange, alkylation, reduction, electrophilic amination, cross-couplings, etc), used every day in academia and industry. Catalytic, using cheap environmentally benign inorganic salts as catalysts, as well as stoichiometric advances will be made. Mixed-metal reagents will also be pioneered in Green Chemistry, by screening their reactivity using green solvents (e.g., 2-methyltetrahydrofuran) and ultimately, the holy grail, using water, which would inspire a synthetic revolution. Bulky ligand supported mixed-metal reagents will be constructed to activate organic heterocyclic molecules towards novel cascade reactions. Incorporating transition metals and lanthanides to this hybrid methodology will expand even more their opportunities in synthesis towards the development of hybrid catalysts for cross-coupling reactions as an alternative to expensive Pd and Ni methodologies. The award of an ERC Starting Grant will help the PI to consolidate her research team and propel her to an internationally-leading status.

Keywords: organometallic chemistry,inorganic chemistry,main group chemistry,mixed-metal synthesis
Sparsity, Image and Geometry to Model Adaptively Visual Processings (SIGMA-VISION)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Computer science and informatics
Countries involved: France
Call:  (ERC-2011-StG_20101014, 2011)
Start date: 2011-10-01
End date: 2016-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1414960.0
EU funding (EUR): 1414960.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

SIGMA-Vision will develop the next generation algorithms and methodologies for image process- ing. These algorithms will rely on several mathematical breakthroughs in image modeling: structured sparsity, geometric representations and adaptivity. They will be implemented using fast optimization codes that can handle massive datasets with gigapixels images and videos. These algorithms will have far reaching applications in computer vision, graphics and neu- roscience. These cutting edge mathematical approaches will go beyond traditional image processing scenarios and impact significantly object recognition, dynamical special effects and exploration of the visual cortex.

Keywords: computer vision,computer graphics,neuroscience,sparsity,image,textures,image synthesis
Microfluidic Combinatorial On Demand Systems: a Platform for High-Throughput Screening in Chemistry and Biotechnology. (MICROCODE)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: ERC Starting Grant Interdisciplinary Panel
Countries involved: Poland
Call:  (ERC-2011-StG_20101014, 2011)
Start date: 2012-01-01
End date: 2016-12-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1749600.0
EU funding (EUR): 1749600.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This proposal addresses an important opportunity in the rapidly developing art of microfluidics. On one hand vast expertise is available on automation of single phase flows via microvalves or electrokinetics and on flow of drops on planar electrodes. These systems are perfectly suited for a range of applications but are inherently inefficient in handling massively large numbers of processes due to correspondingly large number of input/output controls that at best scales logarithmically in the number of processes. On the other hand conducting reactions in thousands micro droplets embodies many of the most acclaimed promises of microfluidics – ultra-miniaturisation, speed, rapid mixing and extensive control of physical conditions. Demonstrations of incubation of cells, in-vitro translation and directed evolution confirm that these techniques can reduce the cost and time of existing processes by orders of magnitude. Droplet microfluidics is at the moment, however, almost (except sorting) completely passive. We recently demonstrated the use of external valves to automate formation and motion of droplets on simple disposable chips and screening up to 10000 compositions per hour. We propose to develop externally controlled programmable modules for i) multiplexed, on-demand generation of multiple emulsions, ii) aspiration of libraries of samples and multiplexing linear libraries into full cross matrices, iii) splitting drops into two, few and large numbers (e.g. 10000) drops, iv) optical monitoring of presence and content of droplets, v) counting cells inside the drops, vi) circulating drops, vii) titration, viii) holding paramagnetic beads in drops. Our design rules will allow to integrate these modules into externally controlled systems for research on i) combinatorial synthesis, ii) material science, iii) role of noise in metabolic networks, iv) evolution of bacteria, v) inexpensive multiplexed diagnostics systems, including cytometry, PCR and ELISA assays in drops.

Keywords: microfluidics,automation,screening,multiplexing
Solving the nanostructure problem: Understanding, exploiting and designing functional disordered materials (NANOSTRUCTURE)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Materials and Synthesis
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2011-StG_20101014, 2011)
Start date: 2011-10-01
End date: 2016-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1694608.0
EU funding (EUR): 1694608.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Many materials of fundamental importance possess structures that do not exhibit long-range periodicity. The absence of Bragg reflections in the diffraction patterns of these materials precludes the use of traditional crystallographic techniques as a means of determining their atomic-scale structures. Yet it is clear that these materials do possess well-defined local structure on the nanometre scale; moreover it is often this local structure that is implicated in the particular physical properties of interest. For this reason, the development of systematic information-based methodologies for the determination of local structure in disordered materials remains one of the key challenges in modern structural science; this is sometimes referred to as the “nanostructure problem”. This proposal addresses this issue by aiming (i) to develop robust methodologies for determining nano-scale structure in amorphous and highly-disordered systems, with an emphasis on laboratory-based techniques, (ii) then to use these techniques to develop structural models that will help address key scientific questions in a broad range of fields, and (iii) to apply the intuition gained to design new materials that exploit disorder to yield next-generation materials with desirable functionalities.

Keywords: disordered and non-crystalline materials,local structure,reverse monte carlo,diffuse scattering