Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
High-speed chip-based nanoscopy to discover real-time sub-cellular dynamics (NANOSCOPY)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Systems and communication engineering
Countries involved: Norway
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-02-01
End date: 2019-01-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1490976.0
EU funding (EUR): 1490976.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Optical nanoscopy has given a glimpse of the impact it may have on medical care in the future. Slow imaging speed and the complexity of the current nanoscope limits its use for living cells. The imaging speed is limited by the bulk optics that is used in present nanoscopy. In this project, I propose a paradigm-shift in the field of advanced microscopy by developing optical nanoscopy based on a photonic integrated circuit. The project will take advantage of nanotechnology to fabricate an advance waveguide-chip, while fast telecom optical devices will provide switching of light to the chip, enhancing the speed of imaging. This unconventional route will change the field of optical microscopy, as a simple chip-based system can be added to a normal microscope. In this project, I will build a waveguide-based structured-illumination microscope (W-SIM) to acquire fast images (25 Hz or better) from a living cell with an optical resolution of 50-100 nm. I will use W-SIM to discover the dynamics (opening and closing) of fenestrations (100 nm) present in the membrane of a living liver sinusoidal scavenger endothelial cell. It is believed among the Hepatology community that these fenestrations open and close dynamically, however there is no scientific evidence to support this hypothesis because of the lack of suitable tools. The successful imaging of fenestration kinetics in a live cell during this project will provide new fundamental knowledge and benefit human health with improved diagnoses and drug discovery for liver. Chip-based nanoscopy is a new research field, inherently making this a high-risk project, but the possible gains are also high. The W-SIM will be the first of its kind, which may open a new era of simple, integrated nanoscopy. The proposed multiple-disciplinary project requires a near-unique expertise in the field of laser physics, integrated optics, advanced microscopy and cell-biology that I have acquired at leading research centers on three continents.

Keywords: super-resolved optical microscopy,bio-medical imaging,live cell imaging
Design Principles in Encoding Complex Noisy Environments (ENCODE)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Genetics,Genomics,Bioinformatics and Systems Biology
Countries involved: Israel
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-02-01
End date: 2020-01-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1498400.0
EU funding (EUR): 1498400.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Animals constantly face complex environments consisted of multiple fluctuating cues. Accurate detection and efficient integration of such perplexing information are essential as animals’ fitness and consequently survival depend on making the right behavioral decisions. However, little is known about how multifaceted stimuli are integrated by neural systems, and how this information flows in the neural network in a single-neuron resolution. Here we aim to address these fundamental questions using C. elegans worms as a model system. With a compact and fully-mapped neural network, C. elegans offers a unique opportunity of generating novel breakthroughs and significantly advance the field. To study functional dynamics on a network-wide scale with an unprecedented single-neuron resolution, we will construct a comprehensive library of transgenic animals expressing state-of-the-art optogenetic tools and Calcium indicators in individual neurons. Moreover, we will study the entire encoding process, beginning with the sensory layer, through integration in the neural network, to behavioral outputs. At the sensory level, we aim to reveal how small sensory systems efficiently encode the complex external world. Next, we will decipher the design principles by which neural circuits integrate and process information. The optogenetic transgenic animals will allow us interrogating computational roles of various circuits by manipulating individual neurons in the network. At the end, we will integrate the gathered knowledge to study how encoding eventually translates to decision making behavioral outputs. Throughout this project, we will use a combination of cutting-edge experimental techniques coupled with extensive computational analyses, modelling and theory. The aims of this interdisciplinary project together with the system-level approaches put it in the front line of research in the Systems Biology field.
Primary Cilium-Mediated Mesenchymal Stem Cell Mechanobiology in Bone (CILIAMECHANOBIO)

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: Ireland,Ireland
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2013-11-01
End date: 2019-07-31
Duration (months): 69.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1455068.0
EU funding (EUR): 1455068.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

Every 30 seconds a person suffers an osteoporosis-related bone fracture in the EU, resulting in significant morbidity, mortality, and health-care costs estimated at €36billion annually. Current therapeutics target bone resorbing osteoclasts, but these are associated with severe side effects. Osteoporosis arises when mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) fail to produce sufficient numbers of bone forming osteoblasts. A key regulator of MSC behaviour is physical loading, yet the mechanisms by which MSCs sense and respond to changes in their mechanical environment are virtually unknown. Primary cilia are nearly ubiquitous ‘antennae-like’ cellular organelles that have very recently emerged as extracellular mechano/chemo-sensors and thus, are strong candidates to play a role in regulating MSC responses in bone. Therefore, the objective of this research program is to determine the role of the primary cilium and associated molecular components in the osteogenic differentiation and recruitment of human MSCs in loading-induced bone adaptation. This will be achieved through ground-breaking in vitro and in vivo techniques developed by the applicant. The knowledge generated in this proposal will represent a profound advance in our understanding of stem cell mechanobiology. In particular, the identification of the cilium and associated molecules as central to stem cell behaviour will lead to the direct manipulation of MSCs via novel cilia-targeted therapeutics that mimic the regenerative influence of loading at a molecular level. These novel therapeutics would therefore target bone formation, providing an alternative path to treatment, resulting in an improved supply of bone forming cells, preventing osteoporosis. Furthermore, these novel therapeutics will be incorporated into biomaterials, generating bioactive osteoinductive scaffolds. These advances will not only improve quality of life for the patient but will significantly reduce the financial burden of bone loss diseases in the EU.

Keywords: biomechanics,mechanobiology,primary cilium,mesenchymal stem cell.
Nanodevice Engineering for a Better Chemical Gas Sensing Technology (BETTERSENSE)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Systems and communication engineering
Countries involved: Spain,Germany
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-02-01
End date: 2019-01-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1498452.0
EU funding (EUR): 1498452.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

BetterSense aims to solve the two main problems in current gas sensor technologies: the high power consumption and the poor selectivity. For the former, we propose a radically new approach: to integrate the sensing components and the energy sources intimately, at the nanoscale, in order to achieve a new kind of sensor concept featuring zero power consumption. For the latter, we will mimic the biological receptors designing a kit of gas-specific molecular organic functionalizations to reach ultra-high gas selectivity figures, comparable to those of biological processes. Both cutting-edge concepts will be developed in parallel an integrated together to render a totally new gas sensing technology that surpasses the state-of-the-art. As a matter of fact, the project will enable, for the first time, the integration of gas detectors in energetically autonomous sensors networks. Additionally, BetterSense will provide an integral solution to the gas sensing challenge by producing a full set of gas-specific sensors over the same platform to ease their integration in multi-analyte systems. Moreover, the project approach will certainly open opportunities in adjacent fields in which power consumption, specificity and nano/micro integration are a concern, such as liquid chemical and biological sensing. In spite of the promising evidences that demonstrate the feasibility of this proposal, there are still many scientific and technological issues to solve, most of them in the edge of what is known and what is possible today in nano-fabrication and nano/micro integration. For this reason, BetterSense also aims to contribute to the global challenge of making nanodevices compatible with scalable, cost-effective, microelectronic technologies. For all this, addressing this challenging proposal in full requires a funding scheme compatible with a high-risk/high-gain vision to finance the full dedication of a highly motivated research team with multidisciplinary skill

Keywords: nano-heterostructured materials,nanomaterials synthesis and integration,microelectronic devices,chemical surface functionalization,ultra-low power consumption,high selectivity
Light Field Imaging and Analysis (LIA)

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: Germany,Germany
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-07-01
End date: 2019-06-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1466100.0
EU funding (EUR): 1466100.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

One of the most fundamental challenges in computer vision is to reliably establish correspondence - how to match a location in one image to its counterpart in another. It lies at the heart of numerous important problems, for example stereo, optical flow, tracking and the reconstruction of scene geometry from several photographs. The most popular approaches to solve these problems are based on the simplification that a scene point looks the same from wherever and whenever it is observed. However, this is fundamentally wrong, since its color changes with viewing direction and illumination. This invariably leads to failures when dealing with reflecting or transparent surfaces or changes in lighting, which commonly occur in natural scenes. We therefore propose to radically rethink the underlying assumptions and work with light fields to describe the visual appearance of a scene. Compared to a traditional image, a light field offers information not only about the amount of incident light, but also the direction where it is coming from. In effect, the light field implicitly captures scene geometry and reflectance properties. In the following, we will argue that variational algorithms based on light field data have the potential to considerably advance the state-of-the-art in all image analysis applications related to lighting-invariant robust matching, geometry reconstruction or reflectance estimation. Since computational cameras are currently making rapid progress, we believe that light fields will soon become a focus of computer vision research. Already, commercial plenoptic cameras allow to easily capture the light field of a scene and are suitable for real-world applications, while a recent survey even predicted that in about 20 years time, every consumer camera will be a light field camera. Our research will investigate fundamental mathematical tools and algorithms which will substantially contribute to drive this development.

Keywords: light fields,image analysis,computational photography,3d reconstruction,photometric stereo,reflectance estimation,inverse problems,variational methods
Physiological Reaction to Predation- A General Way to Link Individuals to Ecosystems (ECOSTRESS)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Evolutionary, population and environmental biology
Countries involved: Israel
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-02-01
End date: 2019-12-31
Duration (months): 71.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1379600.0
EU funding (EUR): 1379600.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This proposal aims to advance a new general theory that links plasticity in prey responses to predation and biogeochemical processes to explain context-dependent variations in ecosystem functioning. The physiological reaction of prey to predation involves allocating resources from production to support emergency functions. An example of such a reaction is an increase in maintenance respiration concomitant with higher carbohydrate and lower N demand. Such changes in prey energy and elemental budget should alter the role prey play in regulating the quality of detrital inputs to soils. Nutrient content of detritus is an important determinant of the way soil communities regulate ecosystem processes. Thus, the physiological reaction of prey to predation can potentially explicate changes in ecosystem functioning. My first empirical examination of a few selected mechanisms of this theory has yielded very promising insights. The main objectives of this proposal are: (1) To systematically test whether prey reactions to predation are consistent with the proposed theory’s predictions across species and ecosystems; (2) to examine the interface between stress physiology and anti-predatory behaviors in explaining predator induced diet shift, and (3) to evaluate how predator induced responses at the individual level regulate ecosystem processes. To address these objectives, I propose combining manipulative field experiments, highly controlled laboratory and garden experiments, and stable-isotopes pulse chase approaches. I will examine individual prey responses and the emerging patterns across five food-chains that represent phylogenetically distant taxa and disparate ecosystems. The proposed study is expected to revolutionize our understanding of the mechanisms by which aboveground predators regulate ecosystem processes. Promoting such a mechanistic understanding is crucial to predict how human-induced changes in biodiversity will affect life-supporting ecosystem services.

Keywords: predation risk,trophic function,ecological stoichiometry,stress physiology,above- belowground linkages,diet choice,nutritional ecology,inducible defenses,food-web dynamics,nitrogen cycle
Wall-crossing and Birational Geometry (WALLXBIRGEOM)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Mathematical foundations
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2013-12-01
End date: 2019-05-31
Duration (months): 66.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1282912.0
EU funding (EUR): 1282912.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

We will use modern techniques in algebraic geometry, originating from string theory and mirror symmetry, to study fundamental problems of classical flavour. More concretely, we apply wall-crossing in the derived category to the birational geometry of moduli spaces. Bridgeland stability is a notion of stability for complexes in the derived category. Wall-crossing describes how moduli spaces of stable complexes change under deformation of the stability condition, often via a birational surgery occurring in its minimal model program (MMP). This relates wall-crossing to the most basic question of algebraic geometry, the classification of algebraic varieties. Our previous results additionally provide a very direct connection between Bridgeland stability conditions and positivity of divisors, the main tool of modern birational geometry. This makes the above link significantly more effective, precise and useful. We will exploit this in the following long-term projects: 1. Prove a Bogomolov-Gieseker type inequality for threefolds that we conjectured previously. This would provide a solution in dimension three to well-known open problems of seemingly completely different nature: the existence of Bridgeland stability conditions, Fujita's conjecture on very ampleness of adjoint line bundles, and projective normality of toric varieties. 2. Study the birational geometry of moduli space of sheaves via wall-crossing, adding more geometric meaning to their MMP. 3. Prove that the MMP for local Calabi-Yau threefolds is completely induced by deformation of Bridgeland stability conditions. The motivation is a derived version of the Kawamata-Morrison cone conjecture, classical questions on Chern classes of stable bundles, and mirror symmetry. 4. Answer major open questions on the birational geometry of the moduli space of genus zero curves (for example, the F-conjecture) using exceptional collections in the derived category and wall-crossing.
Mechanisms of transcription in HIV latency; novel strategies to activate (TRXN-PURGE)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Molecular and Structural Biology and Biochemistry
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-02-01
End date: 2019-01-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1499942.0
EU funding (EUR): 1499942.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The persistence of a transcriptionally competent but latent HIV infected memory CD4+T cell reservoir, despite the effectiveness of Highly Active Antiretroviral therapy (HAART) against active virus, presents the main impediment to HIV eradication. A novel concept in HIV eradication is to activate latent virus to subsequently eliminate with HAART. Much effort has gone into identification of protein complexes that regulate HIV LTR activity. Strategies have mainly relied on candidate approaches. However, due to technical limitations, comprehensive unbiased identification of host proteins associated with and necessary for silencing of the latent HIV LTR has not been possible. Trxn-PURGE proposes a novel multidisciplinary approach combining current knowledge of HIV transcription and new insights into eradication strategies with state of the art high though-put approaches, mycology, virology, genetics and conventional biochemistry to identify novel players in maintenance and activation of HIV transcriptional latency. We will: 1. Use a novel unbiased strategy to identify the in vivo latent LTR-bound protein complex directly from infected T cells. 2. Conduct a cell-based high-throughput Haploid genetic screen to identify novel factors essential for maintenance of HIV latency. 3. Having identified three putative activators from a limited library, we will perform a large-scale screen with unbiased library of fungal supernatants to identify molecules capable of activation of latent HIV. These parallel approaches will identify novel molecular targets and molecules in activation of HIV transcriptional latency, which we will functionally and mechanistically characterize alone and in synergy with known compounds implicated in latent LTR activation in both 4. T cell lines and 5. primary human CD4+T cells harboring latent HIV. By unravelling its molecular mechanisms, Trxn-PURGE will set the stage for the development of a clinical combinatorial therapy to activate latent HIV.

Keywords: transcription regulation,hiv latency,latency reactivation,chromatin,transcriptional latency,hiv eradication,ltr,promotor pulldown,fungal supernatants,haploid genetic cell screen
Quantum-Enhanced Sensors with Single Spins (Q-SENS2)

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: Italy
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-03-01
End date: 2019-02-28
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1500000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Precision measurements are among the most important applications of quantum physics. Concepts derived from quantum information science have been explored to enhance precision measurements, as entangled states have been recognized to potentially provide sensitivity beyond the classical limit. Recent advances have also enabled the development of new types of controlled quantum systems for the realizations of solid-state qubits. Their use as quantum sensors will enable new capabilities, such as an unprecedented combination of sensitivity and spatial resolution. Unfortunately, progress towards real-world applications of quantum sensors is currently limited by the fragile nature of quantum superposition states and difficulties in preparation, control and readout of useful quantum states. Q-SEnS2 aims at overcoming these fundamental challenges by developing novel paradigms for quantum enhanced metrology and sensing in three key areas: 1. Entanglement: We will explore novel classes of entangled states that promise to be more easily created and robust against decoherence. 2. Control: We will develop quantum control to enhance device sensitivity to the signal, attain spectral signal resolution, and achieve increased noise immunity of the sensor. 3. Readout: We will investigate quantum enhanced readout techniques to increase measurement efficiency and to reach sensor performance near the Heisenberg limit. These concepts will be implemented in an experimental platform centered on the Nitrogen- Vacancy (NV) center. The NV center electronic spin can be individually addressed, exploiting optical techniques for polarization and readout and magnetic resonance for its precise manipulation. Thanks to its excellent coherence properties, the NV center has emerged as a remarkable qubit candidate and as a versatile sensor. In Q-SEnS2 we will study NV-based magnetometry, which has the potential to be a transformative technology in fields ranging from medical imaging to materials science