Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Unravelling the Dark Universe from the Canary Islands Observatories (UNDARK)

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
Panel: Physics
Countries involved: Spain,Switzerland,France,Israel,Portugal
Call: Twinning Bottom-Up (HORIZON-WIDERA-2023-ACCESS-02, 2023)
Start date: 2024-10-01
End date: 2027-09-30
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1510089.29
EU funding (EUR): 1478375.0
Participants: 6
Project status: SIGNED

Astrophysical and cosmological observations imply that only 5% of the energy of the Universe is made of conventional matter. The rest is composed by a new type of matter, the so-called dark matter, which has no (or extremely weak) interactions with the known particles, and a yet more puzzling repulsive form of energy accelerating the universe's expansion (dark energy). Advancing our knowledge on the nature of this dark universe is the focus of a global multidisciplinary effort in astroparticle physics. Indeed, solving these puzzles have been identified as a priority for the future of particle physics and cosmology by several scientific agencies worldwide. In this context, UNDARK’s main objective is to transform the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) into a world-class institution in astroparticle physics. This will be accomplished by leveraging IAC's expertise in astronomy and astrophysics with the excellence and theoretical expertise provided by the world’s leading particle physics laboratory (CERN), and three renowned EU institutions in astroparticle physics. UNDARK's work plan includes an ambitious program of networking, scientific events, staff exchanges and scientific collaborations that will significantly enhance the IAC's research capacity and creativity, and will increase its reputation within the EU and global R&I systems. This will be complemented by an extensive outreach program developed in parallel which aims to boost the recognition of the IAC within the general public and public funding bodies. Finally, UNDARK also incorporates training activities focused on research management to increase the management capacity of the IAC and its involvement in HE funding programs. In summary, UNDARK has been designed with the goal of achieving excellence at the Widening coordinator in a priority area of fundamental physics research, thereby addressing one of the most significant challenges in contemporary physics.

Keywords: particle dark matter fundamental interactions and fields new probes of dark matter
Certification for Ethical and Regulatory Transparency in Artificial Intelligence (CERTAIN)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Digital, Industry and Space
Theme: Digital
Destination: World-leading Data and Computing Technologies
Action type: Innovation actions
Partnership: AI-DATA-ROBOTICS (co-programmed)
Countries involved: Luxembourg,Estonia,Spain,Austria,France,Italy,Greece,Switzerland,Slovenia,Belgium,Ireland
Call: AI-driven data operations and compliance technologies (AI, data and robotics partnership) (IA) (HORIZON-CL4-2024-DATA-01, 2024)
Start date: 2025-01-01
End date: 2027-12-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 8881971.25
EU funding (EUR): 6787590.25
Participants: 21
Project status: SIGNED

Along the whole value chain in using data for economic purposes, guidelines and tools are required to make the business of the different stakeholders successful, and the end-users confident that none of their rights are endangered. CERTAIN addresses these needs and delivers solutions for data holders, dataspaces and AI systems providers, and AI systems deployers, which are the primary actors of the data and AI value chain. They must be compliant with applicable European regulations, must reach this compliance in a timely manner, and at reasonable cost. CERTAIN delivers guidelines and technical tools to help with compliance, to assess data quality, to measure biases in datasets, and to protect privacy. CERTAIN sets the foundation of AI certification: it translates the regulations to business terms, builds a directory of certification entities per business, develops a platform to streamline the certification process, and tools for AI system providers and certification entities so that they could respectively prepare and run a certification process. In case of security breach, not only privacy may get compromised, but also AI models may become useless and lead to extremely damageable decisions. To make sure that AI-based products are of high quality and reliability, CERTAIN develops security tools and methods, specifically suitable for dataspaces and AI systems. CERTAIN addresses the environmental footprint of the AI value chain. Innovative techniques are elaborated to reduce energy consumption when building and running AI systems. This is beneficial not only for the green deal but to reduce cost for AI stakeholders. As importantly, CERTAIN considers the end-users perspective, and provides templates and guidelines that may be used by AI systems deployers to reassure end-users on the use of their private data. The project tests its results on seven operational pilots in six different business areas, considering all the actors along the AI value chain.

Keywords: data holders data spaces ai providers ai deployers ai value chain european regulations datasets ai certification green deal privacy fairness trustworthiness security bias
Quantum Network Steering (QNETS)

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: Physics
Countries involved: France
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2026-03-02
End date: 2028-03-01
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 226420.56
EU funding (EUR): 226420.56
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Over the last decade, quantum networks have grown as one of the top candidates to greatly enhance secure processing, communication and computation of information. They exploit entanglement (distributed by photons) to establish correlations between distant systems that are stronger than possible with classical physics. These strong quantum correlations can boost technologies beyond classical limits: they provide a quantum advantage. However, common theoretical approaches to quantum networks suffer from the trade-off between quantum advantages, experimental demands, and security. A first approach is to fully-trust the implementation of network devices, i.e., to assume no defects or malicious behaviour. While optimally providing quantum advantages, this approach is vulnerable to malfunctioning or unnoticed hacking, rendering it insecure for applications. The second approach fully-distrusts the devices and assumes they are subjected to hacking attacks. While providing the highest-level of security, this approach is currently too demanding to practically implement it, rendering it unrealistic for near-term technologies. QNETS will overcome this challenge through the concept of quantum steering. In a steering approach, the network is composed of both, fully-trusted and fully-distrusted devices. It assigns a level of trust to each device individually depending on its role in the network, allowing for implementations of quantum networks under more realistic security assumptions using near-term technologies. In an inter-disciplinary effort, QNETS combines techniques from quantum information, applied mathematics, and computer science. In particular, QNETS will (1) lay out the theoretical foundation of quantum network steering (2) develop mathematical tools for its characterization, and (3) design protocols for its real-world applications, such as cryptography. Upon completion, QNETS will pave the way for the long-term goal of a quantum internet for information processing.

Keywords: quantum networks,entanglement,steering,nonlocality,communication,quantum foundations,quantum correlations,semi device independent,quantum information processing
Advanced Barocaloric Systems for Sustainable Commercial Cooling Applications (BAROCAL)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Innovative Europe
Programme: The European Innovation Council (EIC)
Theme: EIC Accelerator
Destination: Open to supporting projects in all areas of science, technology,...
Action type: EIC actions
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call: EIC Accelerator Open 2024 (HORIZON-EIC-2024-ACCELERATOR-02, 2024)
Start date: 2025-07-01
End date: 2027-06-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 3496250.0
EU funding (EUR): 2447375.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Founded in 2019 in Cambridge (UK), Barocal is revolutionizing the heating and cooling industry with cutting-edge technology based on solid barocaloric materials. This innovative approach offers a low-emission alternative to traditional vapor-compression methods by utilizing barocaloric materials and applying pressure to change temperature. Barocal aims to lead the market in eco-friendly heating and cooling technologies, leveraging its scientific leadership. Committed to developing ultra-high energy efficiency, low-emission systems, Barocal’s solutions benefit customers, the industry, and the planet. The company’s solid refrigerants are safe, have zero global warming potential, and aim to reduce CO2 emissions by 75% compared to the market standard by 2026, achieving 2-3 times higher energy efficiencies. Barocal’s R&D efforts have resulted in a prototype with a high Coefficient of Performance (COP), comparable to traditional vapor compression units. Currently, the company is developing technology, targeting a temperature range of 40 degrees, and a cooling power of 1000 Watts. The prototype aims to transition commercial air-conditioning units into more efficient and cost-saving systems, featuring a modular design for wider applicability and installation. Barocal's journey involves engineering and material science challenges, with application focus tailored through collaborations with OEM partnerships. The commercial ambitions include demonstration projects to test the units in real-life scenarios, providing crucial customer data on return on investment, and de-risking planned scale-up.

Keywords: heating and cooling technologies with barocoloric material
Deciphering commensal-host-pathogen metabolic interactions to combat intestinal infections (GUT-CHECK)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Immunity, Infection and I mmunotherapy
Panel description: The immune system , related disorders  and their mechanisms , biology of infectious agents and infection, biological basis of prevention and treatment of infectious diseases , innovative imm unological tools and approaches , including  therapies
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): 1498750.0
EU funding (EUR): 1498750.0
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

Our intestinal tract offers an attractive environment for bacteria. The beneficial bacteria of our microbiota feast on undigested foods and provide numerous health benefits. Enteric pathogens see this environment as an entry point for infection. Both groups influence each other, creating a tripartite interaction with us, the host. Understanding this interaction represents an emerging research area to combat infections poised to improve human health. Bacteroides are key commensals in these triangular interactions, as they produce diffusible intermediates as part of their metabolism that are utilized by pathogens and the host. These metabolites arise from the action of ~100 polysaccharide utilization loci (PUL) that have been a major focus, from biochemistry to gene regulation. While the field has focused mostly on transcriptional PUL control, recent work from my group and others demonstrated that Bacteroides employ noncoding RNAs to regulate metabolic genes. These insights raise the questions: what is the mechanism by which noncoding RNAs regulate PUL, and how do these mechanisms fit within the tripartite interaction between Bacteroides, the host, and pathogens? In GUT-CHECK, I hypothesize that PUL regulation integrates transcriptional and RNA-mediated post-transcriptional control, which in turn shape the outcome of host-pathogen interactions. To test this hypothesis, I will answer three specific questions: 1) How is PUL expression regulated? 2) How does PUL regulation impact interactions with pathogens and the host? 3) To what extent can PUL regulation be manipulated to thwart pathogen invasion? The proposed work will incorporate a three-way model for Bacteroides, host tissue, and a pathogen along with modern techniques such as CRISPR-based screens and Triple RNA-seq. The functional insights gained will establish fundamental understanding of host-microbiota-pathogen interaction and may lead to novel RNA-based treatments for intestinal infections.

Keywords: rna bacteroides thetaiotaomicron host pathogen interaction rna seq microbiota polysaccharide utilization colon tissue model rna therapeutics
The NUTRI-CHECK NETwork to maximise site-specific precision in managing the nutrition of European arable crops. (NUTRICHECK-NET)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment
Theme: Bio-Environment
Destination: Innovative governance, environmental observations and digital solutions in support of the Green Deal
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: Ireland,Greece,United Kingdom,Portugal,Netherlands,Lithuania,France,Poland,Denmark
Call: Thematic networks to compile and share knowledge ready for practice (HORIZON-CL6-2022-GOVERNANCE-01, 2022)
Start date: 2023-01-01
End date: 2025-12-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2518371.25
EU funding (EUR): 2518371.25
Participants: 10
Project status: SIGNED

Europe faces huge and urgent challenges of increasing crop productivity whilst reducing use of synthetic fertilisers and nutrient losses. This proposal is to establish a self-sustaining, multi-actor, Thematic Network called “NUTRI-CHECK NET” that builds farm-level adoption of best field-specific nutrient management practices across Europe. In nine countries farmers’ Crop Nutrition Clubs (CNC) will identify and share the nature of their uncertainties about crop nutrition, their challenges and barriers to change. Decision-systems and nutrition tools (including commercial products, services, and recent research outputs) will be assembled by national experts from across Europe, including leading farmers, into a common online NUTRI-CHECK NET platform. CNCs will then evaluate effectiveness of new protocols and tools selected from the a toolbox to meet their main challenges. Thence they will co-create and adopt farm- and field-specific ‘measure-to-manage’ approaches that address their crop nutrition challenge(s). Evaluations of protocols and tools by farmers and experts will address their ease of use, trustworthiness, costs, and benefits. Initial and final evaluations will be shared across the Network to define ‘best practices’, which will be demonstrated and disseminated widely, including through liaison with other relevant Thematic Networks and EIP-AGRI. The toolbox and best practices will be held accessible and improvable in perpetua on EU FarmBook. Widespread adoption of ‘measure-to-manage’ or ‘check-to-change’ approaches to crop nutrition will enhance nutrient recycling and crop productivity, whilst reducing synthetic fertiliser use and nutrient losses across Europe.

Keywords: sustainability,nutrient management,arable crops
Dynamic business continuity of critical infrastructures on top of adaptive multi-level cybersecurity (DYNABIC)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Civil Security for Society
Theme: Civil Security for Society
Destination: Increased Cybersecurity
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Spain,France,Romania,Greece,Portugal,Germany,Norway
Call: Dynamic business continuity and recovery methodologies based on models and prediction for multi-level Cybersecurity (HORIZON-CL3-2021-CS-01, 2021)
Start date: 2022-12-01
End date: 2025-11-30
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 4999695.0
EU funding (EUR): 4999695.0
Participants: 18
Project status: SIGNED

Improving the CI capacities at preparedness, detection and response phases requires the attention to the human factor as well as the collaboration of heterogeneous organisations involved in the CI development and operation, ensuring a continuum of care, just as it is done for other ICT systems with the adoption of SecDevOps approaches. DYNABIC Consortium believes that the adoption of defensive AI and novel approaches to continuous business risk management based on enhanced SecDevOps can drastically improve critical services resilience. Furthermore, AI-based self-healing and autonomous response automation can greatly help to achieve fast and efficient recovery and enable the provision of fully resilient critical services to European citizens. The strategic objective of DYNABIC is to increase the resilience and business continuity capabilities of European critical services in the face of advanced cyber-physical threats. This objective will be pursued by delivering new socio-technical methods, models and tools to support resilience through holistic business continuity risk management and control in operation, and dynamic adaptation of responses at system, human and organization planes. DYNABIC will deliver the DYNABIC Framework that will enable OES to predict, quantitatively assess and mitigate in real-time business continuity risks and their potential cascading effects. Furthermore, it will enable the dynamic autonomous adaptation of critical infrastructures to meet Resilience goals by the automatic optimization and orchestration of response strategies. The DYNABIC framework will be validated in two types of demonstrations: i) Smart Preparedness, prevention and Response to Business Disruption risks in 4 critical infrastructures and supply chains (EV charging stations, Critical transport services, Telco services, and Hospital services), and i) Smart Preparedness and Response to Cascading Business Disruption risks in interconnected CIs.

Keywords: cyber security,continuos risk management,dynamic autonomous adaptation,cyber threat intelligence,social science and humanities
The encoding of social networks in the brain (NEURO-SOCIETY)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Panel description: Nervous system development, homeostasis and ageing , nervous system  function and dysfunction , systems neuroscience  and modelling , biological basis of cognitive processes and of behaviour, neurological and mental disorders – In humans and all other organisms
Countries involved: France
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2021-STG, 2021)
Start date: 2023-01-01
End date: 2027-12-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1500000.0
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

In social species, peers represent a major part of the external environment and adaptation to the environment requires adaptation to peers. One striking example is that not only other species can be deadly predators, but members from our own society can pose a deadly threat to us. On the other hand, not only family members can be our allies but also friends we choose from non-kin related group members. This matter of fact exemplifies the importance of tracking others and their relations, and possessing a structured knowledge about our societies. Primates, including humans and monkeys, spend most of their time watching others. While several neural circuits for social perception have been unraveled in their brains, we don’t know how neural circuits further transform social percepts into a meaningful set of social concepts used spontaneously to represent social networks. This question calls for an investigation at multiple levels. An exploratory approach at the whole brain level, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in monkeys and humans, will enable us to chart the brain territories involved in processing social concepts of increasing levels of abstraction, whereby concepts about individuals are less abstract than concepts about relationships, which are in turn less abstract than concepts about social networks topology. Next, a nailed down approach to the level of neurons, using fMRI-guided neurophysiology, will enable us to understand the neuronal network mechanisms by which the transformation from multi-sensory social percepts to social concepts is implemented. Finally, exploiting real-world social knowledge of semi-free ranging monkeys, will enable us to track the encoding of social network topology by neuronal networks. Understanding how neural circuits and single-neurons within these circuits are encoding social networks will provide fundamental mechanistic insights into the toolkit for smoothly maneuvering our primate societies.

Keywords: non human primates monkey fmri neurophysiology faces social interactions social networks multi sensory processing neuroethology