Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
A novel and empowered TARGETed gene addition approach at a relevant microglia locus for the treatment of inherited NeuroMetabolic Diseases (TARGETNMDs)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Panel description: Medical technologies  and tools for prevention, diagnosis and treatment of human diseases, therapeutic approaches and interventions , pharmacology, preventative  medicine, epidemiology and public health , digital medicine
Countries involved: Italy
Call: ERC ADVANCED GRANTS (ERC-2021-ADG, 2021)
Start date: 2022-10-01
End date: 2027-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2495250.0
EU funding (EUR): 2495250.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) gene therapy based on self-inactivating integrating vectors has proven unprecedented therapeutic potential in inherited neurometabolic diseases (NMDs). However, phenotypic effects are delayed after treatment likely due to the slow replacement of resident microglia by transplant-derived cells that hampers the broad application of this approach. Moreover, unregulated gene expression driven by the in-use promoters could in the long term cause unwanted effects. Finally, recent events suggest that the treated patients might be at risk of developing side effects related to vector integration. Therefore, novel strategies anticipating therapeutic benefit and reducing these potential safety concerns are desirable to address the still unmet medical need of NMD patients. Our long-term goal is to develop a novel, broadly effective and safe treatment platform for NMDs based on a newly empowered HSC targeted gene addition approach at a newly identified microglia locus. Our central hypothesis is that correcting the gene defect by targeted addition at this locus in HSCs of patients affected by NMDs could generate in a timely manner a microglia-like progeny endowed with unprecedented therapeutic potential. Indeed, based on our recent findings, gene editing and targeted integration at this locus are expected to uniquely favor the timely engraftment and efficient, rapid myeloid/microglia differentiation of transplanted, edited HSCs in the recipients’ brain, and to induce robust and regulated expression of the integrated transcript in transplant-derived microglia-like cells. Based on this hypothesis, we aim at developing a targeted gene addition approach at the newly selected microglia locus for correcting the underlying genetic defect in HSCs and obtaining proof of concept of its therapeutic potential in NMDs animal models. Thus, the proposed work could generate the basis for a novel treatment platform for these devastating conditions.

Keywords: hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells,transplantation,microglia,gene therapy,inherited neurometabolic diseases of childhood,lysosomal storage disorders
Climate resilient Port Infrastructure (CLARION)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Climate, Energy and Mobility
Theme: Mobility
Destination: Safe, Resilient Transport and Smart Mobility services for passengers and goods
Action type: Innovation actions
Countries involved: Netherlands,Belgium,Germany,Romania,Spain,Greece,Portugal,Croatia,Ireland,Denmark,France,Italy
Call: Climate resilient and safe maritime ports (HORIZON-CL5-2023-D6-01, 2023)
Start date: 2024-05-01
End date: 2028-04-30
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 8193682.5
EU funding (EUR): 6906426.01
Participants: 22
Project status: SIGNED

CLARION gathers a strong multidisciplinary team of 21 partners with complementary research, technical and business profiles, including four ports with inland waterway connections, the top-3 in Europe, in terms of container throughput, namely Rotterdam, Antwerp/Brugge and Hamburg in the North Sea and Constantza, the largest European port in the Black Sea. CLARION ports handle 35.5% of the total container traffic in European ports as per EUROSTAT published 2021 data and provide access to the major inland waterways of the Rhine-Main-Danube axis, Scheldt and Elbe, ensuring significant impact of the application of results on the European maritime ports industry. 10 pilot demonstrations focused on making port infrastructure and hinterland transport resilient and sustainable. CLARION pilot demonstrations will focus on going beyond the SotA to test and deploy smart and sustainable quay walls, monitoring and management system for the corrosion of port infrastructure with an automated floating mobile measuring system, shore tension applicability for RORO and CONRO terminals during storm conditions, flood impact control DT, dredged sediment reuse in port infrastructure, NBS applicability in maritime ports, DT to support the resilience of connected inland waterways infrastructure, a DT for extreme weather forecasts, federated learning using aerial drones/satellite data/in-situ sensors for cadastral measurements and response to extreme weather, and an EMS for extreme weather events. Though each pilot demonstration will be carried out in one of the CLARION ports, achievements will be shared among them and beneficial results will be adopted in the short-term. International stakeholder communities will be engaged to create an Open Innovation Ecosystem that will promote collaboration and sharing of experiences supported by an AB consisting of experts in climate resilience in ports to ensure that transferability of CLARION’s results will not be limited among CLARION ports.

Keywords: climate resilience maritime ports inland waterways port safety and security resilient infrastructures port operational availability
Extractive Expansion and Antisystemic Environmentalism: A Socio-ecological Class Perspective to the Politics of Postgrowth and Revaluation of Nature (REVALUE-PG)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Postdoctoral Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Social Sciences and Humanities
Countries involved: Spain
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2023 (HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01, 2023)
Start date: 2025-03-01
End date: 2027-02-28
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 181152.96
EU funding (EUR): 181152.96
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

REVALUE-PG aims to explore the historical relationship between global extractivism, socio-ecological transformation, agrarian/environmental justice movements, and the politics of postgrowth transition through a conceptual and methodological integration between development studies and environmental studies, particularly the fields of historical sociology and political economy of development, ecological economics, and political ecology. The growth of the social metabolism of the world economy has engendered a global extractive expansion into the rural-natural ecosystems through the formation of extractive commodity frontiers. A central hypothesis is that the current economic rationality of growth grounded in capital accumulation facilitates commodification of nature leading to its socio-cultural and ecological devaluation. The purpose of this project is to understand how global extractivism produces a politics of socio-environmental movements that operate as anti-systemic social forces calling for alternative social forms and practices of organizing and regulating social metabolism and social relations of (re)production and, thereby, shaping grassroot frameworks for a systemic postgrowth transition. In exploring antisystemic environmentalism, it proposes a socio-ecological understanding of class and aims to deepen an account of class dynamics present in socio-environmental conflicts and politics in challenging and politicizing the capitalist relations of extraction. It seeks to explore how postgrowth transition requires a political-economic revaluation of nature outside the commodity form, predicated on socio-ecological rationality. REVALUE-PG focuses on the geographical instance of Türkiye to conduct an in-depth empirical research, as Türkiye has recently exposed the links between the extractivist expansion in rural areas as one of the main backbones of the national politics of economic growth and the expansion of the political field of environmental justice.

Keywords: extractive expansion,rural resource extraction frontiers,socio ecological transformation distribution valuation conflicts,socio environmental movements,environmental justice,postgrowth
Second Nature: Towards an Information-Processing Theory of the Reification of Social Reality (SocialReality)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Panel description: Cognitive science, psychology, linguistics
Countries involved: Israel
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2023-STG, 2023)
Start date: 2023-11-01
End date: 2028-10-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1499465.0
EU funding (EUR): 1499465.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Social reality is comprised of numerous social constructs such as institutions, practices, and norms. These constructs are mind-dependent (e.g., paper money is valuable because people believe it is). Research suggests that when people misconstrue social constructs to be mind-independent facts (e.g., viewing inequality as a fact of nature), they are less likely to question their legitimacy. Thus, the attribution of mind-independence to social constructs, or reification, plays a critical role in governing human behavior. Despite the importance of this process, we currently do not have a general scientific theory that explains reification across its varied instantiations (e.g., the reification of nations, economic systems, mental ailments). In the proposed project I aim to develop and test a domain-general, information-processing theory of reification. My pilot data suggest that there is both between-individual and within-individual gradation in the extent to which constructs are reified. I argue that in both cases, reification may be a consequence of (i) de-mentalizing (i.e., adopting a mindset and a discourse that does not consider mental states); (ii) the mere passage of time and increased experience with the construct; (iii) abstraction of knowledge (in which the process of generating facts omits information concerning the human origins of constructs, giving rise to erroneous inferences of naturalness). These three processes may be causally related (i.e., with increased experience, constructs are abstracted, leading to de-mentalizing); however, they also represent three stand-alone hypotheses which will be assessed across five work-packages—using neuroimaging, natural language processing methods, longitudinal big-data analyses, and behavioral paradigms from experimental economics and memory research. A better understanding of reification may help us devise interventions to de-reify maladaptive states of affairs, thereby addressing some of society's greatest ills.

Keywords: mentalizing,abstraction,shared reality,social memory
Glycans as Master Switches of B Cell Activity in Autoimmunity (GlycanSwitch)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Synergy grants
Action type: ERC actions
Countries involved: Netherlands,Portugal,Croatia
Call: ERC Synergy Grants (ERC-2022-SYG, 2022)
Start date: 2023-01-01
End date: 2028-12-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 9997500.0
EU funding (EUR): 9997500.0
Participants: 4
Project status: SIGNED

Autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are often life-threatening disorders with increasing disability having a negative impact on patients’ quality of life. Mechanisms leading to the breach of tolerance in development of autoimmunity are still largely unknown. Protein glycosylation is an essential regulatory mechanism in the immune system. We recently demonstrated that N-glycosylation of the variable region (Fab) of autoantibodies is a hallmark of RA development and progression. We also demonstrated that autoantibodies acquire these Fab glycosylation signatures already many years before disease onset. We herein hypothesize that Fab glycosylation at the level of the B cell receptor is a key molecular switch promoting the selection, activation and proliferation of autoreactive B cells leading to the concomitant breach of immunotolerance. Within GlycanSwitch, we will map the Fab glycome of various types of RA autoantibodies and autoreactive B cells. We will study the factors and underlying cellular mechanisms that regulate Fab glycosylation of B cell receptors and autoantibodies. We will investigate the immunological effects of Fab glycosylation and the impact in B cells signalling and activation in the context of molecular and cellular interacting partners in the immune microenvironment. Finally, we will test in relevant mouse models how Fab glycosylation of autoantibodies and autoreactive B cells contributes to the breach of tolerance. We expect that the obtained insights into the role of glycans as key checkpoint for the selection of autoreactive B cells and the rise of autoimmunity will provide leads for targeted therapeutic interventions as well as rationales for the early detection of RA and autoimmune diseases in general. We foresee that the knowledge generated will allow us to embark on a targeted prevention clinical study in patients at risk for RA to turn off the GlycanSwitch leading to chronic RA.

Keywords: autoimmunity,tolerance
Phase Transitions for the Generation and Control of Complex Motion in Soft Robots (PHASEBOT)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Countries involved: Germany
Call: ERC CONSOLIDATOR GRANTS (ERC-2025-COG, 2025)
Start date: 2026-05-01
End date: 2031-04-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1997050.0
EU funding (EUR): 1997050.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

We are in the middle of a revolution in which intelligent systems transform our lives and work. Soft robots have shown great promise in important applications such as medicine, search-and-rescue, and object manipulation. However, we do not see them in the real world. One reason is the struggle to execute complex motions with soft robots due to the complexity of controlling many soft actuators in a single system. PHASEBOT proposes the continuous propagation of mechanical first-order phase transitions as a ground-breaking new method for generating complex motion patterns in easy-to-control soft robots. PHASEBOT will devise a framework for embodying motion patterns in soft actuators with phase transitions using fluid-driven soft actuators as a model system (Objective 1). Functional soft materials allow for active control of the behavior of phase transitions to generate and control motion patterns. We will develop strategies to generate a large variety of motions using electrostatic forces as an example mechanism (Objective 2). We will implement the developed concepts in advanced soft robotic systems (Objective 3) to demonstrate the benefits of motion control with phase transitions. Advantages include the generation of complex, versatile motion in simple soft robots, high-performance untethered soft robotic devices, and control concepts that drastically simplify the control of complex soft robots. This ambitious work will involve theoretical analysis and experiments. A structured research program that progresses from model systems to advanced robots ensures its feasibility. PHASEBOT offers a new paradigm for motion control, which can be applied to many soft robotic systems. Thus, PHASEBOT will serve as a foundation for future research and the design of a new generation of high-performance soft robots.

Keywords: soft robotics,phase transitions,nonlinear mechanics,instabilities,soft matter physics,fluid driven actuators,electrostatic actuators
Understanding FinTech Regulatory Sandbox Development in Europe (FIRSA)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Widening Participation and Strengthening the European Research Area
Programme: Widening participation and spreading excellence
Theme: Attracting and mobilising the best talents
Destination: Attracting and mobilising the best talents
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Social Sciences and Humanities
Countries involved: Lithuania
Call: ERA Fellowships (HORIZON-WIDERA-2023-TALENTS-02, 2023)
Start date: 2024-10-01
End date: 2026-09-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 142757.76
EU funding (EUR): 142757.76
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The growth and spread of FinTech has created complex challenges that have placed a significant burden on current regulatory frameworks. In response to the need to balance the promotion of innovation with the maintenance of financial stability and the protection of consumers, one institutional innovation – the FinTech regulatory sandbox (FRSB) – has gained traction to meet these challenges. However, the trajectories of adoption and the level of development of FRSBs vary significantly among EU countries in ways that remain underexplored. The FIRSA project aims to fill this gap by offering a multidimensional measurement framework of FRSBs in the EU to develop a greater understanding of their differences, relative strengths and weaknesses, and the mechanisms that lead to their implementation. Whereas existing comparative studies on FRSBs have focused on their de jure characteristics, this project will include de facto measures and will be organized in three interlocked stages. Stage one will output a measurement framework of FRSB development in the EU. Stage two will create a typology of FRSBs and validate it through qualitative case studies. Finally, stage three will apply qualitative comparative analysis to explain the trajectories of the adoption of FRSBs and factors influencing them. All project results will be disseminated through a project-specific website, which will serve as a hub for all related activities and materials, such as a dashboard on FinTech Regulatory Sandboxes in the EU, academic publications, a webinar series and a policy brief. Its innovative framework and dataset will be made available for policymakers, businesses and researchers, and will improve market efficiency by offering a centralized information hub on regulatory sandbox practices and characteristics that can be used by innovative firms to inform their decisions on if, where and how to enroll in these programs.

Keywords: fintech regulatory sandbox european union
Fault-Tolerant Architectures and Software for Scalable Quantum Computers (QPRINTS)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Innovative Europe
Programme: The European Innovation Council (EIC)
Theme: EIC Accelerator
Destination: Challenges
Action type: EIC actions
Countries involved: Germany
Call: Emerging quantum technology components (HORIZON-EIC-2024-ACCELERATOR-02, 2024)
Start date: 2025-04-01
End date: 2027-03-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 3561428.57
EU funding (EUR): 2493000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The ascent of quantum computing (QC) has been hindered by a pressing crisis:ensuring fault tolerance in the face of inevitable errors due to hardware imperfections. Small to midsized QC enterprises are particularly vulnerable, lacking resources to field large error-correction teams and develop the required sophisticated design tools, thus lagging large competitors. QCDesign is set to revolutionize the QC landscape. We aim to level the playing field through our unique Fault-Tolerant Architectures (FTAs) and design software. Our innovative approach offers licensable FTAs tailored for diverse QC platforms, from photonics to superconducting qubits. Our dual-licensing model—Blueprints for swift fault-tolerance attainment & Boosts for maximizing hardware performance—empowers QC manufacturers, especially SMEs, with a competitive edge. By backing QCDesign, the EIC would be investing not just in one company, but in Europe's QC ecosystem, ensuring we remain at the forefront of QC innovation.

Keywords: quantum computing,quantum technology,quantum error correction,fault tolerant quantum computers,fault tolerance software
Shaping Europe's Clean Energy Future Through Rubicon's AI-Powered Natural Hydrogen Exploration (AI4Hy)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Innovative Europe
Programme: The European Innovation Council (EIC)
Theme: EIC Accelerator
Destination: Other destinations
Action type: EIC actions
Countries involved: France
Call: EIC Accelerator 2025 - Short application (HORIZON-EIC-2025-ACCELERATOR-01, 2025)
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 6500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 6500000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Rubicon Exploration is developing a transformative and innovative approach to natural hydrogen exploration, using advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and geoscience to position Europe at the forefront of the global energy transition. Emerging from the DeepTech incubation program at Télécom Paris, Rubicon is on a mission to revolutionise hydrogen (H2) exploration, aiming to accelerate discovery times by up to 10 times compared to conventional methods. Our state-of-the-art AI-powered algorithms, integrated with comprehensive satellite observations, enable the precise identification of H2-rich zones. This includes over 50,000 identified surface expressions—of which 1,200 have been manually confirmed—extending across France, Europe, and various regions worldwide. Recent field successes have rigorously validated this innovative methodology, aligning satellite-based predictions with confirmed hydrogen emissions and demonstrating the reliability of our approach. With a dedicated and highly skilled team, complemented by a strong advisory board of industry experts, Rubicon is firmly committed to becoming the premier European leader in natural hydrogen early-stage exploration. Our endeavors not only advance sustainable energy solutions but also underscore Europe’s crucial role as a pioneer in clean energy technologies. Through strategic partnerships, collaborative initiatives, and scalable solutions, Rubicon is committed to unlocking a H2-powered future by demonstrating our expertise and promoting international collaboration as we aim to achieve ambitious global decarbonisation goals. We strive to meet current energy demands and ensure Europe takes a leading role on the international stage, driving innovation and sustainability in the hydrogen sector while contributing to a cleaner, greener world, setting the standard for the future of hydrogen exploration.

Keywords: hydrogen,exploration,artificial intelligence