Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Extracellular Vesicles as mediators of Pre-Metastatic Niche Formation in Melanoma (METMAP)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Postdoctoral Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Life Sciences
Countries involved: Belgium
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2023 (HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01, 2023)
Start date: 2024-06-01
End date: 2026-05-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 175920.0
EU funding (EUR): 175920.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Every 2 minutes someone in the world is diagnosed with melanoma, so by the time you read this application dozens of new melanoma cases will be detected. Beyond its growing incidence, cutaneous melanoma is the most aggressive type of skin cancer and notorious for its high metastatic propensity, which constitutes the primary cause of death for these patients. Cellular heterogeneity and plasticity are key features of melanoma, supporting disease progression. The host laboratory has recently charted a functional map of the melanoma ecosystem and identified a cell population that fuels tumor growth (pre-EMT) and another that functions as metastasis-initiating cells (MICs). Increasing evidence indicates that metastatic dissemination of MICs relies on the formation of favourable microenvironments, or pre-metastatic niches (PMN), at secondary sites, and that extracellular vesicles (EVs) shed by the primary tumour are key mediators of PMN formation. I hypothesize that EVs produced by phenotypically distinct melanoma cells are likely to contain different biological information, and thus may exert different (possibly diverging) roles in PMNs formation. In METMAP, I will (i) determine the melanoma cell state(s) contributing to the formation of PMNs via EVs; (ii) dissect the molecular mechanisms underlying PMN formation; and (iii) unravel how these mechanisms facilitate metastatic spreading. I will leverage my background in EVs biology and establish melanoma cell state-reporters to track EV-mediated communication between melanoma subpopulations and PMNs. Proximity labelling will be used to dissect the bioactive contents of EVs transferred to PMNs and perturbation experiments will be conducted to decipher this complex interplay. Through METMAP, I will deliver a functional understanding of how distinct melanoma states contribute to the development of PMN and, ultimately, identify new targets for disruptive therapies that hinder melanoma metastasis.

Keywords: extracellular vesicles,intratumor heterogeneity,metastasis,pre metastatic niche
INcrease Corporate political responsibility and Accountability (INCA) (INCA)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Culture, creativity and inclusive society
Theme: Culture, creativity and inclusive society
Destination: Innovative Research on Democracy and Governance
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Italy,Spain,Portugal,Poland,Estonia,Germany,Netherlands,Romania,Switzerland
Call: Economic models and modern democracies (HORIZON-CL2-2021-DEMOCRACY-01, 2021)
Start date: 2022-10-01
End date: 2026-03-31
Duration (months): 42.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2999991.25
EU funding (EUR): 2999991.25
Participants: 13
Project status: SIGNED

INCA project investigates the impact that so-called digital platforms have on European democracies and institutions. Indeed, while promoting economic growth and labour transformations, these platforms pose challenges to policymakers and citizens in relation to people’ participation in decision-making processes, wealth inequalities and erosion of trust into public institutions. In particular, so-called GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft) are becoming more and more infrastructures for opinion-making, labour organization and political debate. Their increasing power in shaping and influencing such issues through lobbying, industrial relations and cultural impact opened up a wide debate on the way to deal with these transformations. While European societies grew up based on liberal democracies and institutions with their capacity to sustain a coordinated market economy, today their role seems to be reduced because of the difficulties to regulate platforms’ corporate power that spread through politics, economy and culture. INCA aims to • define forms to sustain trust in institutions and new models of governance capable to combine the growth of platforms with social inclusion and citizens participation in decision making processes; • stimulate alternative business models and industrial relations so to make GAFAM and platforms accountable to social fairness while preserving their innovation; • to clarify the way GAFAM influence European citizens opinion conditioning democratic processes. Exploring the socio-historical roots behind platforms growth and the erosion of a coordinated market economy, collecting solid data on GAFAM lobbying, industrial relations and opinion-making, and producing participatory actions for the empowerment of democratic processes and citizens’ engagement, INCA contributes to instil greater democratic accountability and inclusion in economic processes prompted by digital transformations.

Keywords: digital platform,democratic governance,corporate power,lobbying
Dynamical and Arithmetical Model Checking (DynAMiCs)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Synergy grants
Action type: ERC actions
Countries involved: Germany,France
Call: ERC SYNERGY GRANTS (ERC-2024-SyG, 2024)
Start date: 2025-05-01
End date: 2031-04-30
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 7451252.0
EU funding (EUR): 7451252.0
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

Discrete dynamical systems pervade the quantitative sciences, and lie at the heart of central computational challenges in a wide variety of areas, from program analysis and computer-aided verification to neural networks and theoretical biology. Such systems are typically simple to describe, yet give rise to a rich algorithmic and mathematical theory that is replete with easily stated and compelling open problems. One such example is the famous Skolem Problem: does the orbit of a given linear dynamical system ever hit a given hyperplane? The decidability of this question is a longstanding open problem going back nearly a century! The main goal DynAMiCs is to achieve major advances in the algorithmic theory of discrete linear dynamical systems and related formalisms. Whilst our motivation and outlook originate from computer science and automated verification, we approach these challenging problems from both mathematical and computational angles, combining tools and techniques from number theory (e.g., Diophantine approximation, transcendence theory, continued fractions), symbolic dynamics (e.g., word combinatorics, subshifts, numeration systems), and mathematical logic (e.g., monadic second-order logic, Presburger arithmetic, automata theory). One of our leading objectives is to substantially broaden the classes of dynamical systems and properties that can be algorithmically handled via model checking. We aim to achieve these ambitious advances by pursuing new approaches to central open problems in linear systems, such as the Skolem Problem, building on recent breakthroughs in these areas (some of which from the PIs and their groups). We take on this challenge with a team of PIs consisting of international leaders in algorithmic verification, symbolic dynamics, and analytic number theory. We believe our complementary expertise places us in a unique position to achieve major breakthroughs in longstanding fundamental problems in the area of discrete dynamical systems.

Keywords: model checking decidability linear dynamical systems recurrence sequences diophantine approximation symbolic dynamics continued fractions monadic second order logic presburger arithmetic
Strengthening demOcratic engagement through vaLue-bAsed geneRative adversarIal networkS (SOLARIS)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Culture, creativity and inclusive society
Theme: Culture, creativity and inclusive society
Destination: Innovative Research on Democracy and Governance
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Italy,Slovenia,Albania,Germany,United Kingdom,Netherlands,Spain,Bulgaria
Call: Politics and the impact of online social networks and new media (HORIZON-CL2-2022-DEMOCRACY-01, 2022)
Start date: 2023-02-01
End date: 2026-01-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2761250.01
EU funding (EUR): 2761250.0
Participants: 13
Project status: SIGNED

Generative adversarial networks (GANs) are a class of AI models able to create media contents – audio and video – resembling reality. Although there are different promising areas of application of GANs – e.g. audio-graphic productions, human-computer interactions, satire, artistic creative expression – their current and foreseen misleading uses are just as numerous and worrying. The main concern is related to the so-called “deepfakes”, fake images or videos simulating real events with extreme precision. If trained on a face, GANs can make it move and speak in a hyper-realistic way. This technology poses an urgent political threat since GANs could be – and have already been – used to spread fake news and disinformation. This raises an urgent challenge to democratic governance and regulation: to improve GANs accountability, transparency, and trustworthiness. Nevertheless, GANs also constitute an opportunity to enhance democratic awareness and expand active and inclusive citizenship. SOLARIS reacts to these challenges in two ways. On the one hand, we analyse political risks associated with these technologies, to prevent negative implications for EU democracies. As a result, SOLARIS will establish regulatory innovations to detect and mitigate deepfake risks. On the other hand, we assess the opportunities raised by GANs for reinvigorating the democratic engagement of citizens. We will co-create, involving citizen science, value-based GANs contents to enhance democratic engagement. SOLARIS involves three use cases: the first aims at understanding the psychological aspects of GANs perceived trustworthiness. The second simulates the circulation of threatening GANs contents on social media, to detect risks and design mitigation strategies. The third co-creates value-based GANs contents to boost awareness on key global democratic topics (e.g: climate change, gender dimension, human migration), to ultimately enhance active and inclusive digital citizenship.

Keywords: generative adversarial network gan digital democracy deepfake risk mitigation citizen science value sensitive design of technology regulatory innovation strategies and best policy options
Parameterized Algorithms and Polyhedra (PARAMLP)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Computer Science and Informatics
Panel description: Informatics and information systems, computer science, scientific computing, intelligent systems
Countries involved: Denmark
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2025-STG, 2025)
Start date: 2026-01-01
End date: 2030-12-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1498648.0
EU funding (EUR): 1498648.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Polyhedral techniques allow the powerhouse of linear programming to be used for the discrete problems in combinatorial optimization. Their impact on commercial solvers, the theory of classical algorithms, as well as approximation algorithms, is well established. Nevertheless, these techniques play only a marginal role in mainstream research on parameterized algorithms. Recent advances, many of which are due to the PI, are showing potential for a revolutionary synergy between parameterized algorithms and polyhedral techniques. This project aims to unlock the full power of this synergy and use it to address several pressing open questions in combinatorial optimization. The work plan consists of three complementary directions: I. Exploring new frontiers for polyhedral techniques in parameterized algorithms, in particular, the novel usage of proximity bounds to obtain FPT algorithms. We will specifically investigate the open question of whether bin packing in the number of item sizes is in FPT. II. Closing notorious loose ends in existing research lines, in particular, the lack of polyhedral understanding of algebraic methods in matroid problems. III. Embracing parameterization to strengthen polyhedral techniques in approximation algorithms. Specifically, we will investigate an innovative technique crucial for understanding the approximability of scheduling on unrelated parallel machines, max-min fair allocation, and directed Steiner tree. The topics of the project are relevant for a broad spectrum of researchers from both parameterized algorithms and approximation algorithms and have the potential to bring these fields much closer together.
Towards Excellent Robotics and Artificial Intelligence at a Slovak university (TERAIS)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Widening Participation and Strengthening the European Research Area
Programme: Widening participation and spreading excellence
Theme: Improved access to Excellence
Destination: Improved access to Excellence
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: Slovakia,Germany,Italy
Call: Twinning (HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-ACCESS-03, 2021)
Start date: 2022-10-01
End date: 2025-09-30
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1578793.75
EU funding (EUR): 1499890.0
Participants: 3
Project status: SIGNED

The TERAIS project aims at transforming the Department of Applied Informatics (DAI) at COMENIUS UNIVERSITY in Bratislava (UKBA) to a workplace of international academic excellence and an outstanding example for other HEIs in Slovakia. To achieve this, the project aims to: (1) prepare conditions for systematic development of human capital and research capacity of DAI UKBA, (2) establish sustainable networking and collaboration links with partner institutions/within UKBA, (3) boost scientific profile of DAI towards mitigating the research and innovation gap, (4) establish institutional research support structures at UKBA. The partnership will comprise, in addition to DAI UKBA, the Knowledge Technology team at UNIVERSITÄT HAMBURG in Germany - with exceptional expertise in neural networks, deep learning and crossmodal learning for developmental robotics - and two units at ISTITUTO ITALIANO DI TECNOLOGIA in Italy - with excellent experience in humanoid robotics, control using physical and simulated robots and human-robot interaction. The project will be based on 4 pillars: (1) PEOPLE - aiming at creating a life-long career development system at UKBA; (2) NETWORKING - focusing on strengthening collaboration links with international partners and the business community; (3) RESEARCH - focusing on cognitive robotics, a part of embodied artificial intelligence, in which all project partners have outstanding expertise; and (4) SUPPORT - directed towards building the necessary research support structures at UKBA. The project will leverage a broad range of channels, such as staff/student exchanges, joint events/proposals/publications and specific dissemination/communication tools. The project is expected to contribute to promoting research excellence at different levels (UKBA: DAI, Faculty, University; Slovakia; international scientific community) and achieving wider economic and social impacts - with UKBA serving as a key agent of transformation.

Keywords: cognitive robotics,neural networks,human robot interaction
Global Hydroconnectivities beyond Oceans, Seas and Rivers (HydroConnect)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Panel description: Sociology, social psychology, education  sciences , communication  studies
Countries involved: Norway
Call: ERC CONSOLIDATOR GRANTS (ERC-2023-COG, 2023)
Start date: 2026-01-01
End date: 2030-12-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2263509.0
EU funding (EUR): 2263509.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

HydroConnect focuses on the connectivities afforded by hidden, underground fresh water that surfaces along the coastlines of islands lacking accessible, perennial fresh water. It explores how Austronesian-speaking seafarers transformed such freshwater ‘seeps’ into wells throughout the South China Sea and Indo-Pacific, affording sea-routes around these well networks. Thus, HydroConnect breaks with the tendency in the social sciences and historiography to analytically privilege oceans or navigable rivers as vectors of global connections and history-making. With the innovative concept of hydroconnectivities – human connections afforded by fresh water access – HydroConnect develops a novel theoretical framework linking the terrestrial and the aquatic through comparative historical ethnography of Austronesian speakers’ Indigenous knowledge, which has crossed oceans and flowed down generations, travelling between different groups of people. Deploying a cyclical tidalectic methodology transcending anthropology, archaeology and geology, it breaks new methodological and theoretical ground for conceptualising global history through hydrological connectivities across these chains of island worlds in different oceans. First, it studies how this travelling Indigenous knowledge enabled hydroconnectivities that opened up sea routes and integrated fresh water, well infrastructure, and ecological and social exchanges across immense oceanic spaces in the past. Second, the project maps and theorizes how present-day descendants and successors of Austronesian-speaking seafarers benefit from vernacular hydrological knowledge of underground freshwater seeps. Thus, it advances analogical knowledge for tackling groundwater depletion to enable past-informed and future-oriented water policies for the sustainable management of the Earth’s aquifers.

Keywords: anthropology,ethnography,hydroconnectivities,islanders,traveling indigenous knowledge,freshwater wells,tidalectic methodology,archaeological survey,geological mapping
Everyday Aesthetic Value (EveryAesthetic)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Postdoctoral Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Social Sciences and Humanities
Countries involved: Sweden
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2023 (HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01, 2023)
Start date: 2024-08-12
End date: 2026-08-11
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 206887.68
EU funding (EUR): 206887.68
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Understanding the nature of aesthetic value is important because it forms a big part of what makes our lives worth living. In the last 10-15 years, there has been an upsurge of interest in theories of aesthetic value. However, most of this work has focussed on understanding the value of artworks and artefacts, and this has created a blind spot in understanding the nature of aesthetic value: the realm of everyday aesthetic phenomena. EveryAesthetic addresses this lacuna by developing an innovative approach to aesthetic value that takes seriously the extent of its diversity and fullness in our lives. It has two research and innovation objectives. First, it aims to identify and elucidate the challenges that everyday aesthetic phenomena pose to prominent existing theories of aesthetic value. Second, it aims to develop answers to two key questions regarding the nature of everyday aesthetic phenomena; namely, how to demarcate these phenomena as aesthetic and how to explain what makes them valuable. EveryAesthetic makes a timely critical intervention in current debates about aesthetic value, and it offers a foundational contribution to literature on everyday aesthetics, bridging the gap between these two fields of research. The supervisor, Prof. Elisabeth Schellekens, is a world-renowned philosopher who specialises in questions concerning aesthetic value. The host institution, the Department of Philosophy at Uppsala University (UU), has an exceptionally strong research record in aesthetics. Both are ideally placed in Europe to facilitate EveryAesthetic by supporting me to gain the expertise I need to pursue its objectives and enhance my employability. Meanwhile, I will transfer knowledge I have spanning the disciplines of philosophy and art history to the Department at UU by undertaking a variety of knowledge-transfer and dissemination activities, including delivering a postgraduate course, delivering guest lectures, and participating in its programme of research events.

Keywords: aesthetics,aesthetic value,everyday aesthetics,value theory
RTI Summit 2025 (RTI Summit 2025)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: Research infrastructures
Theme: Research infrastructures
Destination: Other destinations
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: Denmark
Call: Danish Presidency conference on research infrastructures (HORIZON-INFRA-2025-DK-CONF-IBA, 2025)
Start date: 2025-06-01
End date: 2026-01-31
Duration (months): 8.0
Total project cost (EUR): 149651.69
EU funding (EUR): 149651.69
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The RTI Summit 2025 (“A Research and Technology Infrastructures Ecosystem for Breakthrough Science and Innovation”) will provide a platform to connect policymakers, researchers, and industry leaders to advance the European strategy for Research and Technology Infrastructures (RIs and TIs). Aligned with the ERA(European Research Area) Policy Agenda 2025-2027 and the European Commission’s Competitiveness Compass 2025, this conference underscores the pivotal role of RIs and TIs in driving Europe's green and digital transitions, fostering industrial competitiveness, and enhancing technological sovereignty. RIs enable groundbreaking research by offering access to state-of-the-art facilities, fostering cross-border collaboration, and supporting open science. TIs complement RIs by providing the resources and expertise needed to scale technological innovations, de-risk industrial investments, and foster the uptake of new technologies in companies in the EU. The RTI Summit 2025 will bring together stakeholders from RIs, TIs, industry and the surrounding innovation ecosystem to discuss best practices and how to overcome structural, geographical and financial barriers. The effort will kick-start the work under the new EU strategy for RIs and TIs and support Europe’s industrial competitiveness and green ambitions.

Keywords: research infrastructures,technology infrastructures,energy,materials,semiconductors,quantum,science policy