Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Pathogen Phylodynamics: Unifying Evolution, Infection and Immunity (PATHPHYLODYN)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Evolutionary, Population and Environmental Biology
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-05-01
End date: 2020-04-30
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1973325.0
EU funding (EUR): 1973325.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Genetic sequences represent a rich source of information about evolutionary and ecological processes in natural populations. However the development of methods to recover this information is being outpaced by the explosion in sequence data, especially since the introduction of ‘next-generation’ sequencing. This problem is particularly acute for the inter-disciplinary field of pathogen phylodynamics. The rapid evolution of many pathogens means their ecological and evolutionary dynamics occur on the same timescale and therefore new analytical methods are required to study this joint behaviour. Further, the small genome sizes and medical importance of many viruses mean that hundreds of thousands of homologous sequences are already available, and sample sizes will continue to grow. The main goal of this proposal is to develop and apply multiple new frameworks of evolutionary analysis, to unlock the full potential of current data and to exploit new types of sequence data for which no rigorous analytical methods currently exist. Across four related themes I will use these novel methods to answer major unsolved questions about the evolutionary dynamics of viruses and their hosts: (i) How can we measure adaptation in data sets comprising many thousands of genomes? (ii) Can we reveal the adaptation of viral lineages to the genetic variation in immunity present in host populations? (iii) How can we combine mathematical ecological models with viral genomics to better predict the outcome of chronic HIV and hepatitis C virus infection, or the success of anti-viral drug therapy? (iv) Can we apply methods from ecology and evolution to analyse new data on immune receptor diversity, and use them to better understand the dynamics of leukaemia and viral infection? The suite of analytical methods created during this project will open fresh avenues of research, creating opportunities to exploit the future growth in genetic data on biological diversity across many disciplines.
Anthelmintic Research and Optimization (A-HERO)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Diagnostic Tools, Therapies and Public Health
Countries involved: Switzerland
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-05-01
End date: 2020-04-30
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1927350.0
EU funding (EUR): 1927350.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

I propose an ambitious, yet feasible 6-year research project that will fill an important gap in global health. Specifically, I will develop and validate novel approaches for anthelmintic drug discovery and development. My proposal pursues the following five research questions: (i) Is a chip calorimeter suitable for high-throughput screening in anthelmintic drug discovery? (ii) Is combination chemotherapy safe and more efficacious than monotherapy against strongyloidiasis and trichuriasis? (iii) What are the key pharmacokinetic parameters of praziquantel in preschool-aged children and school-aged children infected with Schistosoma mansoni and S. haematobium using a novel and validated technology based on dried blood spotting? (iv) What are the metabolic consequences and clearance of praziquantel treatment in S. mansoni-infected mice and S. mansoni- and S. haematobium-infected children? (v) Which is the ideal compartment to study pharmacokinetic parameters for intestinal nematode infections and does age, nutrition, co-infection and infection intensity influence the efficacy of anthelmintic drugs? My proposed research is of considerable public health relevance since it will ultimately result in improved treatments for soil-transmitted helminthiasis and pediatric schistosomiasis. Additionally, at the end of this project, I have generated comprehensive information on drug disposition of anthelmintics. A comprehensive database of metabolite profiles following praziquantel treatment will be available. Finally, the proof-of-concept of chip calorimetry in anthelmintic drug discovery has been established and broadly validated.

Keywords: helminth infections,neglected tropical diseases,anthelmintics,drug discovery,drug development,pharmacokinetics,combination chemotherapy,chip calorimeter,metabonomics,dried blood spots
GenoChemetics: Gene eXpression enabling selective Chemical functionalisation of natural products (GCGXC)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-06-01
End date: 2020-04-30
Duration (months): 71.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1981272.0
EU funding (EUR): 1981272.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

We aim to consolidate a trans-disciplinary research programme in which synthetic biology is harnessed to enable synthetic chemistry. We will utilise this approach to expeditiously access series of previously intractable natural product analogues. There is an urgent need for the discovery and development of new drugs and in particular new antibiotics. More than 13 million lives worldwide are currently claimed each year due to infectious diseases. Natural products provide an unparalleled starting point for drug discovery, with over 60% of anticancer agents and over 70% of antibiotics entering clinical trials in the last three decades being based on such compounds. In order to gain a full understanding as to how a drug works and in order to be able to generate compounds with improved biological activity and physicochemical properties the generation of analogues is essential. In recent years pharmaceutical industries have shied away from natural products due to the perceived synthetic intractability of libraries of natural product analogues and the misperception that it is not possible to carry out thorough structure activity relationship (SAR) assessment on such compounds. As a result of largely abandoning natural products, industries’ drug discovery pipelines are beginning to run dry; this is a particular concern when faced with the need to combat the ever-increasing problem of drug resistance and infectious disease. We aim to challenge the misperception that natural products are not “med chemable” We are developing a new approach to natural product analogue synthesis. By introducing a gene from a foreign organism to complement existing natural product biosynthetic machinery we are able to introduce a chemically orthogonal, reactive and selectably chemically functionalisable handle into the natural product (the antithesis of a protecting group) - this reactive handle will enable us to carry out chemical modifications only at the site at which it is located.

Keywords: "natural products",biosynthesis,antibiotics
Performance-Art in Eastern Europe (1950-1990): History and Theory (PERFORMEAST)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Cultures and Cultural Production
Countries involved: Switzerland
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-10-01
End date: 2019-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1998302.0
EU funding (EUR): 1998302.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The aim of this project is to provide, for the very first time, an overview of the historical and transnational development of performance art (performances, actions, happenings) in Eastern Europe during the dictatorship period. Performance art shall not only be presented as an object of study, but also as a central art genre implicitly and explicitly involved both in the investigation of cultural practices and in the creation of alternative ways of action. The project focuses, for one, on the artistic exploration of totalitarian or real-socialist practices, rituals, and gestures, but also on artistic ways of action developed in the course of underground activity. Eastern European performance art came to life under conditions in which it was from the very start considered as dubious both aesthetically and contentwise. However, tolerance, hindrance, and sometimes even prohibition led to a heightened degree of self-reflection, minimalism, abstraction, and analysis; in other words, to characteristics representative of the specificity of East European performance art between 1950 and 1990. At the same time, the proposed project is to be understood as an archaeological one, for it sets out to reconstruct correlations and interactions between unofficial artistic production and official cultural practice. Moreover, it aims to make available to a broader public artistic endeavours that until now could not be centred on in research fields like art history, theatre-, and cultural studies in an Eastern European context. The project will concentrate on the following four research areas: 1. Territorial interrelationships (between the Eastern European countries, between East and West) 2. Specificity of practice in Eastern European performance art (subversive affirmation, minimalism, abstraction) 3. Interrelationships between artistic action and political activism in the underground 4. Self-reflection in Eastern European performance art (self-archivisation, self-commentary)

Keywords: performance art,action art,body art,happening,eastern europe,dictatorship,slavic studies,ritual,gesture,documentation
Development trajectories of temperate forest plant communities under global change: combining hindsight and forecasting (PASTFORWARD) (PASTFORWARD)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Medical Biotechnology
Countries involved: Belgium
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-06-01
End date: 2019-05-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1887780.0
EU funding (EUR): 1887780.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The last decades are characterized by an upsurge of research on the impacts of global environmental changes on forests. Climate warming, atmospheric deposition of acidifying and eutrophying pollutants and land-use change are three of the most important threats to biodiversity in temperate forests. However, most studies focused on the effects of single factors over short time periods, such that our ability to predict the combined effects of multiple global change drivers over longer time periods remains rudimentary. The lack of knowledge on effects of global change drivers on forest herb layer communities is particularly striking, since the herb layer contains the largest part of vascular plant diversity in temperate forests and provides key ecosystem services. Therefore PASTFORWARD will build an integrative understanding of the interactive effects of land-use change, atmospheric deposition and climate warming on forest herb layer communities, starting from the insight that changes in herb layer communities are driven primarily by past land use, but can be modulated by atmospheric deposition, climate warming and forest management. Indeed, it is still largely ignored that sensible predictions of herb layer development trajectories under global change can only be made by taking the forest’s land-use history into account, as legacies of past land use can leave century-long imprints on forest herb layer communities. Three complementary data sources (a database with resurveyed vegetation plots, field measurements in a pan-European network of resurvey plots, and a multi-factor experiment) combined with an ecosystem model will be used. Furthermore, concepts and tools from different disciplines, ranging from history over sylviculture to community and ecosystem ecology will be applied. The results of PASTFORWARD will help forest managers and policy makers in taking more informed decisions on how to combine resource extraction with biodiversity conservation.

Keywords: sustainable forest management,global change biology,community ecology,ecosystem ecology,historical ecology,biodiversity conservation
Toxoplasma gondii secretes an armada of effector proteins to co-opt its host cell transcriptome and microRNome to promote sustained parasitism (HOSTINGTOXO)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Immunity and Infection
Countries involved: France
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-05-01
End date: 2019-12-31
Duration (months): 68.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1968644.0
EU funding (EUR): 1968644.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Toxoplasma gondii is a widespread obligate intracellular protozoan parasite causing toxoplasmosis, a severe disease in immunocompromised or congenitally infected humans. It can infect any type of nucleated cells and grow inside a parasitophorous vacuole (PV) from where it directs profound changes in their transcriptome, proteome and microRNome. During invasion and creation of the PV membrane, apically oriented organelles called micronemes and rhoptries are discharged, followed later by release of dense granules content (DG). Recent advances have highlighted few strain-specific parasite effectors released from the rhoptry into the host cells where they neutralize cell autonomous immunity defences or subvert the host cell transcriptome thereby governing the fate of immune response and disease outcomes. Considering the magnitude of the repertoire of mRNA- and microRNA-encoding genes that is differentially regulated in host cells, it seems certain that other critical rhoptry- and DG-resident proteins that interact with host signaling pathways await discovery. By integrating diverse genomic-scale analyses and using reverse genetic, we identify novel DG proteins that are singularly exported beyond the tachyzoites-hosting PV to the host cell nucleus, thus extending the scope of the function of DG proteins beyond their dedicated role in vacuole formation. This collection of novel parasite effectors will be invaluable towards our goal of understanding how T. gondii actively remodels the genome expression of its hosting cell with profound and coupled impact on both parasite developmental process and the host immune response. We propose i) to characterize thoroughly the function of novel effector proteins secreted by T. gondii and ii) to explore how their synergistic or antagonist effects on host gene regulation contribute to promote sustained parasitism. An original line of research will be dedicated to determine by which means T. gondii re-programs the host microRNome.

Keywords: toxoplasma gondii,host cell-parasite interaction,transcriptome,micrornome,epigenome,parasite effector proteins
Soft and Small: Acoustic Transducers Inspired by Nature (SASATIN)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Medical Biotechnology
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-02-01
End date: 2019-01-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1997854.8
EU funding (EUR): 1997854.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The use of sound by humanity is ubiquitous. We utilise sound across a far greater range than we can hear for numerous extremely beneficial tasks. In Nature many animals have evolved ears, many of which are sensitive to sounds beyond human audibility. This includes an enormous variety of insects whose miniature ears detect sound to communicate, to detect their prey, or to avoid their own predators. Over recent years our understanding of the different insect ear functions, such as frequency filtering, analysis and tuning, has improved greatly. Insect ears can also be far more sensitive than equivalently sized artificial microphones, and have embedded ‘active’ and ‘passive’ functions, for example to actively tune their response, or passively match impedance to ensure sensitivity. However, we still know very little about the mechanical and physiological basis behind these functions. This project will use our knowledge of how insects hear to inspire the design and prototyping of artificial acoustic sensors. Existing microphones and ultrasonic devices have severe physical sensitivity limitations. This project seeks to change the fundamental approach to sensor design using inspiration from biology, such that previous limitations on size, functionality, power consumption, and robustness are avoided, whilst advancing fundamental understanding of the insect ear’s sensing capacity. The project will take a multi-disciplinary approach, involving biology, engineering, physics and mathematics, exploiting the latest computer simulation and polymeric 3D microfabrication methods to provide incredibly fast design, cost-effective prototyping and analysis.

Keywords: biologically inspired technology. acoustics. hearing.
Nomadic Empires: A World-Historical Perspective (NOMADICEMPIRES)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: The Study of the Human Past
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-04-01
End date: 2019-06-30
Duration (months): 63.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1998584.0
EU funding (EUR): 1998584.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This project provides a wide-ranging and inclusive reinterpretation of the history of equestrian nomadic empires from the fourth century BCE to the late nineteenth century CE. The project has four major objectives that are interrelated. First, it expands the scope of the research significantly by extending it beyond the better known Eurasian nomadic empires into the Americas, where new research has revealed—and may yet reveal—previously unidentified nomadic empires. The project also re-examines the 7th-century expansion of the Arab Bedouins as an expression of nomadic imperial formation. Second, the project seeks to untangle the study of nomadic empires from normative and mechanistic models by developing new conceptual avenues that allow us to examine nomadic empires on their own cultural terms. It re-examines the intersections among mobility, expansion, exploitation, incorporation and dominance by reorienting research toward a new set of heuristic avenues: the nodal spatial composition of nomadic regimes, the centrality of borderlands in imperial formation, and a notion of nomadic empires as kinetic empires that turned mobility into an imperial strategy. Third, the project breaks new methodological ground by showing how innovative and underused approaches—integration of environmental and imperial histories; blending of multiple analytical scales to reveal the socio-political complexity of nomadic societies; and a specific spatial reorientation in which developments are viewed holistically from nomadic domains outward—produce a broader and more nuanced understanding of the emergence, behaviour and historical influences of nomadic empires. Such approaches will uncover a range of different nomadic empires across the world over a vast time span. The fourth objective of the project is to represent and explain those empires as a multifaceted world-shaping phenomenon through process-oriented comparisons that focus on imperial dynamics rather than imperial types.

Keywords: nomads,empires,world history,borderlands history,environmental history,comparative history
Multiscale modelling of gas-fluidized flows of non-spherical particles (NONSPHEREFLOW)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Products and Processes Engineering
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-05-01
End date: 2019-08-31
Duration (months): 64.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1983012.0
EU funding (EUR): 1983012.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

Many important products are made using fluidized bed reactors, where solid particles are suspended by a gas flow. This promotes highly efficient gas-particle contact, resulting in high heat transfer, high chemical reaction rates and high product yields. Multiscale modelling has proven to be indispensable in the design and optimisation of fluidized bed reactors. Most coarse-grained models assume that the solid particles are of spherical shape because this simplifies the treatment of gas-solid drag and particle collisions. However, many particles used in fluidized bed (bio)reactors are non-spherical. This means that anisotropic collisions, anisotropic gas-solid drag, effects of local particle alignment, and alignment by nearby internal and external walls all need to be taken into account. I propose to pioneer a multiscale simulation methodology, backed up by validating in-house experiments, for prediction of structure formation in gas-solid flows of inelastic non-spherical particles. As a first step we focus on elongated particles. The multiscale approach consists of: 1) fully resolved simulations to obtain closures for translational and rotational gas drag tensors in crowded environments and near external and internal walls, 2) Discrete Particle Model simulations to validate the drag closures with matching experiments and to obtain statistics of angular and linear velocity changes due to inter-particle collisions between groups of particles, 3) a novel Lagrangian method based on stochastic multi-particle collisions. The collision propagation rules make maximum use of conservation laws and local symmetries of the particle configuration, orientation and deformation rates. The coarse-grained model is amenable to a parcel approach and can be coupled with heat and mass transfer models, allowing for simulation of industrial scale reactors with non-spherical particles.

Keywords: non-spherical particles,fluidized bed,multiscale modelling,lagrangian model,anisotropic gas-solid drag,particle alignment,multiparticle collisions,particle stress,biofuels