Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Pathways to Alzheimer's disease (PATHAD)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment 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: Sweden
Call: ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2015-CoG, 2015)
Start date: 2016-12-01
End date: 2021-11-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1985093.0
EU funding (EUR): 1985093.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Critical to our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and also to finding therapies is determining how key pathological factors interact and relate to neuronal toxicity, symptoms and disease progression. My research has focussed on amyloid beta (Aβ) moities and demonstrated that cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) Aβ42 correlates with cerebral Aβ pathology; that Aβ accumulates in the brain 10-20 years prior to onset of symptoms; and that CSF Aβ abnormalities precede CSF tau changes. However, it is increasingly clear that a simple linear model of AD aetiology and progression is inadequate. This proposal aims at developing and validating new diagnostic and prognostic biomarker tools to examine the AD pathogenesis in humans taking a broad view of AD’s multiple pathophysiological features and their putative biomarkers. The major questions, all relevant to therapeutic research, that will be addressed in my proposal include: (i) how are different forms of Aβ produced and modified; (ii) what is the toxicity of these different forms; (iii) how is this toxicity mediated; and iv) what other pathologies may contribute to or modify AD-like phenotypes? We and others have shown that Aβ monomers are relatively non-toxic. We will address the hypothesis that Aβ starts to accumulate in the brains of certain individuals due to defective clearance of the peptide. Once aggregated, Aβ acquires chemical modifications during brain incubation over years. These modified Aβ forms then induce tau hyperphosphorylation and concomitantly over-activate the immune system, resulting in neurotoxicity. Other pathologies, including α-synuclein and TDP-43, may contribute in this process. In PATHAD, we will develop and validate new diagnostic and prognostic tools using a combination of groundbreaking technologies and unique clinical materials to dissect the underlying molecular pathogenesis of AD in much greater detail than what has been possible before and facilitate the development of effective treatments.

Keywords: alzheimer s disease,biomarkers,cerebrospinal fluid,amyloid beta,microglia
Pushing ultrafast laser material processing into a new regime of plasma-controlled ablation (PULSAR)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Products and processes engineering
Panel description: Product and process design, chemical, civil, environmental, mechanical, vehicle engineering, energy processes and relevant computational methods
Countries involved: France,France
Call: ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2015-CoG, 2015)
Start date: 2016-07-01
End date: 2021-12-31
Duration (months): 66.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1996581.0
EU funding (EUR): 1996581.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

Ultra-intense femtosecond laser pulses promise to become a fast, universal, predictable and green tool for material processing at micro and nanometric scale. The recent tremendous increase in commercially available femtosecond laser energy at high repetition rate opens a wealth of novel perspectives for mass production. But even at high energy, laser processing remains limited to high-speed scanning point by point removal of ultra-thin nanometric layers from the material surface. This is because the uncontrolled laser-generated free-electron plasma shields against light and prevents reaching extreme internal temperatures at very precise nanometric scale. PULSAR aims at breaking this barrier and developing a radically different concept of laser material modification regime based on free-electron plasma control. PULSAR 's unconventional concept is to control plasma generation, confinement, excitation and stability. An ambitious experimental and numerical research program will push the frontiers of laser processing to unprecedented precision, speed and predictability. PULSAR key concept is highly generic and the results will initiate new research across laser and plasma material processing, plasma physics and ultrafast optics.

Keywords: ultrashort pulse laser ablation,laser micromachining
The first Integrated m-Health solution for anaphylaxis management. (Anapphylaxis)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Industrial Leadership
Programme: Information and Communication Technologies
Action type: SME instrument
Countries involved: Spain
Call: Open Disruptive Innovation Scheme (H2020-SMEINST-1-2016-2017, 2017)
Start date: 2017-05-01
End date: 2017-09-30
Duration (months): 5.0
Total project cost (EUR): 71429.0
EU funding (EUR): 50000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Adan Medical Innovation is a private company focused on the medical devices and the m-health solutions markets. We have patented an m-Health technology for anaphylaxis management, which consists on a smart case for an epinephrine auto-injector linked via Bluetooth to a medical mobile app. Anaphylaxis is a serious allergic reaction that is rapid in onset and may cause death. The only adequate treatment is an immediate intramuscular epinephrine injection by using an auto-injector. However, patient self-management of auto-injectors has several problems: a) Need to check periodically drug condition, b) low adherence because patients forget carrying the auto-injector, c) difficulties to administer intramuscular epinephrine. Adanmi has developed the first integrated solution to solve all these issues: a) The smart auto-injector case monitors epinephrine condition; b) The smartphone alerts distance from auto-injector in case the subject forgets it, c) during anaphylaxis it initiates an automated emergency protocol alerting contacts with exact GPS location and providing administration video-instructions.

Keywords: anaphylaxis,m health
Eve – From ‘black box’ to yellow box: full insight technology for chicken hatcheries (EVE)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Industrial Leadership
Programme: Innovation in SMEs
Action type: SME instrument
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call: SME instrument (H2020-SMEInst-2018-2020-1, 2018)
Start date: 2018-09-01
End date: 2019-02-28
Duration (months): 6.0
Total project cost (EUR): 71429.0
EU funding (EUR): 50000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The EU poultry industry produces 6.6 BN chickens a year for meat and egg production. These chickens are hatched in specialized farms called hatcheries. However, 14% of the incubated eggs never hatches and 6.9% of the produced chickens is unmarketable due to deformities or health problems. Hatcheries are a crucial part in the poultry production chain and early days of a chickens’ live. Nevertheless, the incubation of eggs and hatching of chickens is a poorly monitored process, especially in the light of current advances in sensor and internet technologies. In Ovo, a hightech Dutch startup - focusing on improving animal welfare and resource efficiency in the poultry industry - is developing a sensors platform for monitoring the hatching process. With the new platform called Eve, it is for the first time possible to monitor and improve processes in hatcheries by measuring data related to biological processes. By real-time analysis of biological data, it becomes possible to detect flaws and potential problems that until now no one was aware of. Eve is outfitted with cameras and smart sensors for monitoring a large set of biological/microbiological parameters. Early awareness of potential hazards will give breeding specialists in hatcheries the possibility to intervene. This increases production, lowers mortality and morbidity rates and provides higher animal welfare. Research shows a 50% reduction in nonmarketable chicks (improving profitability €375K per hatchery a year), improving resource efficiency (880,000 chicks per hatchery a year) and improving animal welfare (less unnecessary deaths) targeting multiple EU policies, consumer demands and business opportunities. The feasibility study will focus on creation of a business plan. In Ovo was world news when they discovered a novel method to stop the culling of male chicks, won many prizes, has experience with running H2020 projects and is about to get venture capitalists on board (€2MM).

Keywords: sensors,poultry,platform,chicken,hatchery,animal welfare,microbiology,eggs,optimization,efficiency,production,incubator,resource efficiency,hatchling
Clearance Of Microbial Biofilms by Advancing diagnostics and Therapy (COMBAT)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Immunity, Infection and Immunotherapy
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 immunological tools and approaches, including therapies
Countries involved: Germany
Call: ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2016-COG, 2016)
Start date: 2017-05-01
End date: 2022-04-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1998750.0
EU funding (EUR): 1998750.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Every year chronic infections in patients due to biofilm formation of pathogenic bacteria are a multi-billion Euro burden to national healthcare systems. Despite improvements in technology and medical services, morbidity and mortality due to chronic infections have remained unchanged over the past decades. The emergence of a chronic infection disease burden calls for the development of modern diagnostics for biofilm resistance profiling and new therapeutic strategies to eradicate biofilm-associated infections. However, many unsuccessful attempts to address this need teach us that alternative perspectives are needed to meet the challenges. The project is committed to develop innovative diagnostics and to strive for therapeutic solutions in patients suffering from biofilm-associated infections. The objective is to apply data-driven science to unlock the potential of microbial genomics. This new approach uses tools of advanced microbiological genomics and machine learning in genome-wide association studies on an existing unprecedentedly large dataset. This dataset has been generated in my group within the last five years and comprises sequence variation and gene expression information of a plethora of clinical Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates. The wealth of patterns and characteristics of biofilm resistance are invisible at a smaller scale and will be interpreted within context and domain-specific knowledge. The unique combination of basic molecular biology research, technology-driven approaches and data-driven science allows pioneer research dedicated to advance strategies to combat biofilm-associated infections. My approach does not only provide a prediction of biofilm resistance based on the bacteria´s genotype but also holds promise to transform treatment paradigms for the management of chronic infections and by interference with bacterial stress responses will promote the effectiveness of antimicrobials in clinical use to eradicate biofilm infections.

Keywords: biofilms,chronic bacterial infections,bacterial genomics
Suspended Life: Exploring Cryopreservation Practices in Contemporary Societies (CRYOSOCIETIES)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: The Social World and Its Diversity
Panel description: Sociology, social psychology, social anthropology, education sciences, communication studies
Countries involved: Germany
Call: ERC Advanced Grant (ERC-2017-ADG, 2017)
Start date: 2019-04-01
End date: 2025-03-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2497587.0
EU funding (EUR): 2497587.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Cryopreservation practices are an essential dimension of contemporary life sciences. They make possible the freezing and storage of cells, tissues and other organic materials at very low temperatures and the subsequent thawing of these at a future date without apparent loss of vitality. Although cryotechnologies are fundamental to reproductive technologies, regenerative medicine, transplantation surgery and conservation biology, they have largely escaped scholarly attention in science and technology studies, anthropology and sociology. CRYOSOCIETIES explores the crucial role of cryopreservation in affecting temporalities and the concept of life. The project is based on the thesis that in contemporary societies, cryopreservation practices bring into existence a new form of life: “suspended life”. “Suspended life” enables vital processes to be kept in a liminal state in which biological substances are neither fully alive nor dead. CRYOSOCIETIES generates profound empirical knowledge about the creation of “suspended life” through three ethnographic studies that investigate various sites of cryopreservation. A fourth subproject develops a complex theoretical framework in order to grasp the temporal and spatial regimes of the different cryopractices. CRYOSOCIETIES breaks analytical ground in three important ways. First, the project provides the first systematic and comprehensive empirical study of “suspended life” and deepens our knowledge of how cryopreservation works in different settings. Secondly, it undertakes pioneering work on cryopreservation practices in Europe, generating novel ways of understanding how “suspended life” is assembled, negotiated and mobilised in European societies. Thirdly, CRYOSOCIETIES develops an innovative methodological and theoretical framework in order to address the relationality and materiality of cryopreservation practices and to explore the concept of vitality and the politics of life in the 21st century.

Keywords: cryopreservation,biopolitics,life
Sources of Meaning: Grounding Formal Semantics (ORISEM)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Panel description: Cognitive science, psychology, linguistics, theoretical philosophy
Countries involved: France
Call: ERC Advanced Grant (ERC-2017-ADG, 2017)
Start date: 2019-05-01
End date: 2024-04-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2499416.0
EU funding (EUR): 2499416.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

While formal semantics has established itself as a rigorous field, its impact on the broader cognitive sciences has remained suboptimal. Besides the inherent complexity of formal theories, the reason might be that the data explained are narrowly linguistic. We propose to extend the breadth and explanatory depth of formal semantic theories by testing them against understudied objects. Within language, we study spoken language gestures as well as sign languages, especially in their iconic dimension. Beyond language, we investigate primate gestural and vocal communication, and semantic effects in music. Our goal is threefold. First, we investigate how the typology of semantic operations extends to these new objects. Second, we explore the cognitive underpinnings of these operations in two types of cases: when the extension of a rule to a new type of object provides new constraints on the form of this rule (e.g. the existence of a presupposition triggering mechanism in iconic constructions); and when an expression has cognitive uses beyond language (e.g. raised eyebrows, or increased loudness). Third, we explore possible evolutionary connections among operations found in speech, sign, human and non-human gestures, and music. We will (i) explore gestural counterparts of formal semantic operations found in sign language, (ii) investigate how the rich typology of inferences uncovered by semantics extends to iconic gestures, and (iii) conduct a comparative investigation of this typology for iconic vs. non-iconic inferences in sign language. We will (iv) extend the enterprise beyond humans by exploring how a particular operation, implicatures, extends in animal linguistics, and whether human gestural expressions have counterparts in apes; and we will (v) develop a generalization of iconic semantics that accounts for semantic effects in music. Empirical findings will help develop new theories of how specific inferences (e.g. presuppositions, focus) are triggered.

Keywords: formal semantics,pragmatics,formal semantics of sign languages,formal semantics of gestures
Computational Dissection of Effective Circuitry and Encoding in the Retina for Normal and Restored Vision (CODE4Vision)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator 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
Countries involved: Germany
Call: ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2016-COG, 2016)
Start date: 2017-06-01
End date: 2022-11-30
Duration (months): 66.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1991445.0
EU funding (EUR): 1991445.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Understanding how neural circuits process and encode information is a fundamental goal in neuroscience. For the neural network of the retina, such knowledge is also of concrete importance for the development of vision restoration therapies for patients suffering from degeneration of photoreceptors. Artificial stimulation of retinal neurons through electronic implants or inserted light-sensitive proteins (“optogenetics”) aims at reconstructing natural transmission of visual information to the brain. Recreating natural retinal activity, however, will require a thorough understanding of the complex and diverse neural code of the retina. The challenge lies in deciphering the various nonlinear operations and dynamics in the around 30 parallel signalling streams that emerge from the retina, represented by as many types of ganglion cells, the retina’s output neurons. The CODE4Vision project will tackle this challenge by identifying the effective connectivity between the different types of retinal ganglion cells and their excitatory presynaptic partners, bipolar cells, and by determining the features of information processing between these neuronal layers. We will characterize the layout of bipolar cell inputs to large populations of ganglion cells with novel analyses that we derive from computational statistics and machine learning. We will then study the nonlinear and dynamical features of these connections by designing closed-loop experiments that automatically adjust visual stimuli to the identified layout of bipolar cells. These analyses will be supplemented by direct measurements of connections through simultaneous bipolar and ganglion cell recordings. The results will pave the way towards new models of how the retina encodes natural visual stimuli. Finally, we will apply this knowledge to mouse models of optogenetic vision restoration in order to develop stimulation schemes that emulate natural retinal stimulus encoding.

Keywords: neural coding,functional connectivity,retina
SySTEM 2020: Connecting Science Learning Outside The Classroom (SySTEM 2020)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Science with and for Society
Programme: Encourage citizens to engage in science through formal and informal science education, and promote the diffusion of science-based activities, namely in science centres and through other appropriate channels
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Israel,Spain,Austria,Austria,Germany,Italy,Ireland,Belgium,Belgium,Greece,Slovenia,Switzerland,Finland,Serbia,Bulgaria,Sweden,Greece,Greece,France,Czechia,Netherlands,Portugal,United Kingdom,Denmark
Call: Science education outside the classroom (H2020-SwafS-2017-1, 2017)
Start date: 2018-05-01
End date: 2021-06-30
Duration (months): 38.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2999982.0
EU funding (EUR): 2999982.0
Participants: 25
Project status: CLOSED

SySTEM 2020 will focus on science learning outside the classroom, mapping the field across Europe, evaluating a number of transdisciplinary programmes to design best principles for educators in this field, and also examining individual learning ecologies by piloting self-evaluation tools for learners which will document science learning outside of the classroom. This study will map practices in 19 EU countries, including in-depth studies in 8 of these countries, covering learners between 9 - 20 years from various backgrounds including those from geographically remote, socio-economically disadvantaged, minority and/or migrant communities.

Keywords: science education