Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Sustainable Solid State Sodium Batteries (4SBATT)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Materials Engineering
Panel description: Advanced materials development: performance enhancement, modelling, large -scale preparation, modification, tailoring, optimisation, novel  and combined use of materials, etc.
Countries involved: Germany
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2021-STG, 2021)
Start date: 2022-09-01
End date: 2027-08-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1813373.75
EU funding (EUR): 1813373.75
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The Li-ion battery, developed in the last 30 years, is a very successful technology. However, it now faces the challenge of powering the e-mobility revolution, requiring a large increase of raw resources availability. At this point in history, given the roadmap of the European Green Deal and the need to reduce CO2 emissions, such a scale up should be seen as a unique opportunity to eliminate unsustainable elements from the batteries. Yet the Li-ion battery relies on a series of elements that are critical, most importantly Li, Co and natural graphite. Moreover, the safety of Li-ion batteries is often in question, and their energy content still needs to increase to satisfy the demand for extended driving ranges. In this context, 4SBATT aims to develop a solid-state battery based on Na, rather than Li, representing the best solution in terms of four key parameters: sustainability, energy density (specific and volumetric), readiness of adoption (i.e. compatibility with existing Li-ion production lines) and safety. To achieve such a challenging goal, 4SBATT will operate at the cross-section between inorganic chemistry, materials science, and engineering. My team and I will develop a combined computational and experimental approach based on density functional theory and in situ x-ray diffraction during synthesis that will allow us to explore large amounts of temperature-dependent multicomponent phase diagrams for various classes of materials. Thereby we will design and prepare novel Na-based inorganic compounds for positive electrodes, solid electrolytes and negative electrodes. Then the physical properties of materials and composite electrodes will be characterized to understand, improve and engineer their performances. Finally we will assemble solid-state batteries, based on Na and sustainable elements such as Fe, Mn and Si, intrinsically safe due to the non-flammable solid electrolyte, and targeting record energy densities of 300 Wh/kg and 750 Wh/l at the cell level.

Keywords: sodium,battery,solid state,sustainability,x ray diffraction,in situ characterization,density functional theory,synthesis,inorganic materials,phase diagrams
Leveraging the zombie-making strategies of Ophiocordyceps fungi to understand animal behaviour (ZOMBIHAVIOUR)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
Panel description: For all organisms : Ecology, biodiversity, environmental change , evolutionary biology, behavioural ecology, microbial ecology , marine biology, ecophysiology, theoretical developments and mod elling
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call: ERC CONSOLIDATOR GRANTS (ERC-2023-COG, 2023)
Start date: 2024-05-01
End date: 2029-04-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2000000.0
EU funding (EUR): 2000000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Reminiscent of zombies in pop culture, some parasites hijack host behaviours. Our understanding of this parasite strategy to improve transmission is minimal, despite its convergent evolution across major taxa. Functional genetics studies would advance our knowledge of the molecular underpinnings of “zombie behaviour”. Additionally, learning how behaviour can be altered would elucidate how “normal” phenotypes are maintained. However, most zombie-making parasites and their hosts are not classic model organisms, which complicates mechanistic interrogation. The so-called “zombie ants’ can be used to study parasite hijacking of animal behaviour in more detail. Zombie ants are infected by Ophiocordyceps fungi that cause summit disease. Infected ants ascend vegetation that they bite into as they die to ensure fungal spore dispersal. My lab developed fungal culturing techniques, infection methods and behavioural assays to detail infection-related changes in daily ant foraging, communication, and locomotion. Additionally, by integrating multi-omics tools, we identified candidate fungal products and ant host pathways that might underlie the behavioural changes observed. However, to move from correlation to causation these candidates need to be functionally tested. By leveraging my lab’s pioneering work and my training in molecular microbiology I aim to elucidate the molecular genetics underlying parasite hijacking of host behaviour. I propose to 1) adopt molecular genetics tools to characterise fungal products that induce altered host behavioural phenotypes, 2) use RNASeq and RNAi to investigate the affected ant pathways that give rise to those phenotypes, and 3) further establish involvement of these behavioural pathways through integration of the animal model Drosophila melanogaster. The proposed work will be transformative in our understanding of parasite manipulation strategies and spark novel research into sustainable pest control strategies and fungus-derived drugs.
The Politics of the Latent Educational Cleavage (POLEDUC)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Institutions, Governance and Legal Systems
Panel description: Political science, international relations, law
Countries involved: Germany
Call: ERC CONSOLIDATOR GRANTS (ERC-2024-COG, 2024)
Start date: 2025-09-01
End date: 2030-08-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1999966.0
EU funding (EUR): 1999966.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

One of the most important changes of the last 200 years is the massive educational expansion and the related shift from industrial to post-industrial societies in countries around the globe. This educational revolution has reshaped our societies and economies. But it also transformed politics: Nowadays, education affects almost every aspect of politics. A new systematic conflict line has emerged: the educational cleavage. Its emergence has not gone unnoticed. But existing research remains scattered across disciplines and subfields and has not developed into a comprehensive research agenda yet. POLEDUC offers a comprehensive research agenda on the POlitics of the Latent EDUcational Cleavage across countries, over time, and across three analytical levels: the micro-level of individuals’ attitudes, perceptions, identities, and behavior; the meso-level of organized political actors; and the macro-level of (unequal) representation in the politics of policy-making. POLEDUC develops a unified multi-dimensional theoretical framework and offers novel, ground-breaking empirical analyses, combining quantitative, qualitative, and experimental state-of-the-art methods. On the micro-level, POLEDUC uses existing and conducts new public opinion surveys to study the educational cleavage across countries and over time, surveying the general population and higher education students in particular. On the meso-level, we analyze the party politics of the educational cleavage using qualitative and machine learning tools plus an expert survey. On the macro-level we explore whether and why policy-makers are increasingly responsive to more educated citizens, using comparative case studies. Overall, POLEDUC studies a phenomenon of utmost social and scientific relevance. It breaks new theoretical and empirical ground on a core cleavage of contemporary politics, uncovering a defining feature of modern democracy and contributing novel insights to several fields and disciplines.

Keywords: education,politics of education,skills,cleavages,cleavage politics,comparative politics,political sociology,political behavior,attitudes,policy preferences,party politics,policy making,welfare state,comparative political economy
Enabling Wireless Information and Power Transfer through Low-Complexity Waveform Techniques (WAVE)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Proof of concept grants
Action type: ERC actions
Countries involved: Cyprus
Call: ERC PROOF OF CONCEPT GRANTS2 (ERC-2022-POC2, 2022)
Start date: 2024-01-01
End date: 2026-03-31
Duration (months): 27.0
Total project cost (EUR): 150000.0
EU funding (EUR): 150000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Wireless information and power transfer (WIPT) is a new communication paradigm, which is based on the dual-use of radio-frequency (RF) signals as a means to convey information and energize low power devices. WIPT is an attractive and promising technology for the upcoming 6G communication systems, which are characterized by the massive connectivity of heterogeneous ultra-low-power devices under the umbrella of the Internet of Things (IoT). Due to the nonlinearity of the rectification process, the efficient design of WIPT requires an essential rethinking of the entire transceiver chain, including the waveform design at the transmitter side. Specifically, experimental and theoretical results have demonstrated that signals with high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) such as multisine signals are efficient for RF harvesting; these signals admit periodic high energy peaks that enable us to overcome the build-in potential of the diodes. On the other hand, it is well-known that PAPR has a detrimental effect on information transfer, thus calling for a sophisticated co-design of the information and energy signals to resolve this issue and accommodate these conflicting goals. The goal of the WAVE Proof of Concept (PoC) is to demonstrate in real-world scenarios two novel multisine-based WIPT waveforms that achieve a desired information/energy transfer efficiency balance. We aim to further investigate and implement the Tone-Index Multisine (TIM) and Frequency-Domain WIPT (FD-WIPT) waveforms that have been developed in the ERC Consolidator Grant APOLLO. The two proposed waveforms exploit PAPR in a controlled way and are characterized by extremely low complexity, which makes them attractive for practical IoT applications. The experimental validation of the developed waveforms will demonstrate their benefits in comparison to the current state of the art and will constitute a useful tool for attracting potential industrial stakeholders and exploring commercial avenues.
Transforming Europe Through Doctoral Talent and Skills Recognition (DocTalent4EU)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Widening Participation and Strengthening the European Research Area
Programme: Reforming and enhancing the European R&I System
Theme: Reforming and enhancing the European R&I System
Destination: Reforming and enhancing the European R&I System
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: France,Romania,Spain,Norway,Luxembourg,Ireland,Portugal
Call: Developing an effective ERA talent pipeline (HORIZON-WIDERA-2022-ERA-01, 2022)
Start date: 2023-01-01
End date: 2025-03-31
Duration (months): 27.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1584587.5
EU funding (EUR): 1584585.0
Participants: 8
Project status: CLOSED

DocTalent4EU aims to enhance PhD employability through a strong, visible and innovative recognition-system of the most in-demand transferable skills (relying on the ESCO framework) that early-career researchers (ECRs) acquire or will acquire through their doctoral training and research activities. The consortium will adopt a multi-actor approach involving non-academic stakeholders (e.g. public authorities, industries or business) to improve transferable skills training and to develop local talent management centers. The project will also develop a new prototype based on machine learning to support ESCO in continuously updating and predicting the most in-demand skills on the labour market concerning the 8 EQF level, according to the expected skills from job offer collections.

Keywords: digital credentials transferable skill career development doctoral training
Cooperation and Support for MSCA NCPs (MSCA-NET)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: MSCA other
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: Switzerland,Tunisia,United Kingdom,Spain,Egypt,Romania,Israel,Estonia,Croatia,Italy,Greece,Iceland,France,Türkiye,Germany,Ireland,Slovakia,Hungary,Cyprus,Bulgaria,Faroe Islands,Denmark,Argentina,Philippines,Uruguay,Malta
Call: Trans-national cooperation among Marie Skłodowska-Curie National Contact Points (NCP) 2021 (HORIZON-MSCA-2021-NCP-01, 2021)
Start date: 2022-03-01
End date: 2025-02-28
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1870356.9
EU funding (EUR): 1870356.9
Participants: 32
Project status: SIGNED

The objective of MSCA-NET is to facilitate the transnational co-operation between National Contact Points (NCPs) for the MSCA in order to achieve a consistent and harmonized level of NCP support. Next to developing support for the facilitation of daily challenges for all NCPs, we put the focus on lowering the entry barriers for new NCPs and offer particular support services for Widening and Third Country NCPs. This will in turn simplify the access of potential MSCA applicants all over the world, in particular from Widening and Third Countries. We thus contribute to the decrease of the R&I gap between EU Member States/Associated Countries and Widening/Third Countries. We aim at a higher quality and quantity of applications from non EU-Member States/Associated Countries. We will achieve our goals by a wide array of measures: Career Development Support for NCPs in the form of Trainings, Twinnings and Mentoring; the development of a tool box for both NCPs and the scientific community; and strategic capacity development and the creation of synergies with and among MSCA stakeholders. This includes systematic outreach to the non-academic sector. The project is structured into 5 Work Packages and has 27 Beneficiaries and 4 Associated Partners from all levels of experience and among all Horizon Europe country groups. The baseline for our support services to NCPs is a benchmarking exercise whose results will be fed into the various relevant tasks. We ensure the expected project impact by strategical monitoring of the project actions and well planned communication, dissemination and exploitation measures such as the development of an innovative project dashboard. The project's outcomes will be fed back to policy developers and stakeholders within clearly defined processes in order to guarantee a sustainable impact on a wider level. MSCA-NET will run for 36 months and has an overall budget of 1'870'357 Euro. The action is under the coordination of Euresearch in Switzerland.

Keywords: national contact points,transnational cooperation,msca,training,mentoring,best practice sharing,support,horizon europe,impact,synergies
Development of a synthetic diversification platform for targeted EVOLUTION of ENZYMES supporting a sustainable bioeconomy – EvoZyme (EvoZyme)

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: Spain
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2022 (HORIZON-MSCA-2022-PF-01, 2022)
Start date: 2024-01-01
End date: 2025-12-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 165312.96
EU funding (EUR): 165312.96
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The ongoing climate change requires immediate actions to reduce the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. One such action is the transition from a fossil-based to a bio-based economy that builds on CO2-derived one-carbon (C1) feedstocks like formate. To this end, synthetic C1 assimilation routes are being engineered into biotechnological relevant microbes. Among them, the reductive glycine pathway (rGlyP) bears enormous potential for biotechnological applications as it is short, energy efficient, and easy to engineer. So far, optimization of growth on formate via the rGlyP was achieved by adaptive laboratory evolution, a time-consuming process that leads to incorporation of undesired mutations and does not allow targeted pathway optimization (debottlenecking). In EvoZyme, I aim to develop a Synthetic Biology platform for targeted evolution of pathway enzymes. This platform consists of specialized Escherichia coli strains that are equipped with state-of-the-art diversification machineries allowing tunable hyperdiversification/evolution of target enzymes. Furthermore, the platform is capable of transferring the diversified enzyme libraries to various bacterial hosts. To benchmark the platform, I aim to debottleneck the rGlyP by targeting its core enzyme, the glycine cleavage system (GCS) which catalyzes the rate-limiting step of glycine synthesis. Diversification and optimization of the GCS will be tested in dedicated selection strains from different bacterial hosts that can only grow if a functional GCS is expressed. Ultimately, optimized GCS variants will be expressed in a formatotrophic E. coli strain lacking a GCS. Improved formatotrophic growth will be analyzed in lab-scale bioreactors to determine techno-economic parameters required for the establishment of a formate bioeconomy. The platform developed in this project will enable debottlenecking of rate-limiting enzymes in virtually any pathway and presents a valuable tool for Synthetic Biology.

Keywords: synthetic biology,directed evolution,metabolic engineering,c1 metabolism,biosensors,bioeconomy
PZT and Graphene MATerials innovations for advanced opto-Electronic applications in AR and biosensing (MatEl)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Digital, Industry and Space
Theme: Industry
Destination: Increased Autonomy in Key Strategic Value Chains for Resilient Industry
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Greece,Netherlands,Spain,Czechia,Switzerland
Call: Innovative materials for advanced (nano)electronic components and systems (RIA) (HORIZON-CL4-2022-RESILIENCE-01, 2022)
Start date: 2023-01-01
End date: 2026-06-30
Duration (months): 42.0
Total project cost (EUR): 3243750.0
EU funding (EUR): 3243750.0
Participants: 8
Project status: SIGNED

Europe’s leading position in photonics and electronics can only be secured by adapting to the next generation of optoelectronic devices requirements: high performance, multi-functionality and cost efficiency in miniaturized footprint. These can only be achieved if novel schemes for on-chip integration emerge. Among the established platforms for optoelectronic integrated circuits (OEICs), silicon nitride as a wide-band and low-loss material stands outs. However, Si3N4 itself has no active effect and the heterogeneous integration of active III-V and II-VI semiconductor chips is currently very complicated and costly. MatEl offers a unique solution to this challenge and promises to enable a novel on-chip integration scheme: Laser Digital Processing - Laser Transfer and Laser Soldering - will be employed for the accurate and fast alignment and bonding of any type of chip package (OEIC) on Si3N4. The hybrid platform will be enhanced bythe monolithic integration of advanced materials (graphene and high-quality PZT), which will enable multiple functionalities in miniaturized footprint. MatEl will thus demonstrate two next-gen optoelectronic devices at TRL5: 1) 2D light source for AR displays with integrated RGB lasers and OEIC-based demultiplexers. 2) Bio-photonic sensor for antibodies detection with on-chip VCSEL at 850 nm featuring graphene photodetectors. Overall, MatEl ’s hybrid platform will combine the wide bandwidth and high confinement provided by Si3N4 with the active functionality of III-V and II-VI lasers, supporting a broad spectrum of next-gen applications, extending far beyond these demo applications. Hence, MatEl will reinforce the existing collaborations within the consortium and introduce new eco-systems, estimated to strengthen the EU photonics and microelectronics industrial capability by generating multi M€ turnovers to the involved SMEs and more than 200 new employment positions by the end of its timeframe.

Keywords: optoelectonic and integrated circuits,laser digital integration,graphene detectors,pzt modulators
Conversational Systems for Emotional Support and Customer Assistance (CRYSTAL)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Staff Exchanges
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Information Science and Engineering
Countries involved: Spain,Austria,Italy,Germany,United Kingdom
Call: MSCA Staff Exchanges 2023 (HORIZON-MSCA-2023-SE-01, 2023)
Start date: 2024-11-01
End date: 2028-10-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 833914.29
EU funding (EUR): 717600.0
Participants: 10
Project status: SIGNED

CRYSTAL (Conversational Systems for Emotional Support and Customer Assistance) will advance research for a next generation of conversational models and systems that implement reliable, friendly and efficient human-machine interactions that can assist humans in tasks beyond automatic information provision, such as emotional support as well as customer assistance. Emotional support provided to vulnerable individuals, such as ageing adults or people experiencing anxiety or depression. Advanced customer assistance provided to call centres, providing customer care and response to customer inquiries, in an empathic, inviting, accurate and efficient manner. Conversational models and systems will be developed by proposing novel learning strategies for domain adaptation, exploring Large Language Models (LLMs) and prompt engineering methodologies. User state estimation will be also considered, and strategies, such as behavioural models and stakeholder goals, will guide the policies for dialogue management. Novel evaluation frameworks will be also designed by including automatic metrics, usability as well as human acceptance of the technology. Strict ethical and AI robustness compliance procedures will be applied, as conversational recordings will be collected, anonymised, annotated and encrypted for collaborative work among the project partners. The project will apply extensive staff secondments and foster sustainable knowledge exchange. It will grow the experiences and insights of the partner organisations’ staff via intersectoral and interdisciplinary collaborations, implemented through secondments as well as training and networking activities. Dissemination, communication and exploitation activities will expand the project’s impact pathways.

Keywords: ageing well emotional support guidance customer assistance call center