Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Durability of geopolymers as 21st century concretes (GEOPOLYCONC)

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: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2013-09-01
End date: 2018-08-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1495458.0
EU funding (EUR): 1495458.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

GeopolyConc will provide the necessary scientific basis for the prediction of the long-term durability performance of alkali-activated ‘geopolymer’ concretes. These materials can be synthesised from industrial by-products and widely-available natural resources, and provide the opportunity for a highly significant reduction in the environmental footprint of the global construction materials industry, as it expands to meet the infrastructure needs of 21st century society. Experimental and modelling approaches will be coupled to provide major advances in the state of the art in the science and engineering of geopolymer concretes. The key scientific focus areas will be: (a) the development of the first ever rigorous mathematical description of the factors influencing the transport properties of alkali-activated concretes, and (b) ground-breaking work in understanding and controlling the factors which lead to the onset of corrosion of steel reinforcing embedded in alkali-activated concretes. This project will generate confidence in geopolymer concrete durability, which is essential to the application of these materials in reducing EU and global CO2 emissions. The GeopolyConc project will also be integrated with leading multinational collaborative test programmes coordinated through a RILEM Technical Committee (TC DTA) which is chaired by the PI, providing a route to direct international utilisation of the project outcomes.

Keywords: geopolymer,concrete,alkali-activated cement,durability,service life prediction,sustainability,construction
Quantum walks in superconducting networks (QUANTUMWALKS)

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: Israel
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2013-08-01
End date: 2018-07-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1317560.0
EU funding (EUR): 1317560.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

I propose to build a general purpose continuous quantum walk platform using superconducting devices (resonators, qubits and SQUIDS). This system will include up to 40 sites and will implement basic quantum simulation algorithms, generalized interferometry and explore the quantum-classical boundary for many-particle entangled systems. Quantum walks (QW) are a novel scheme for quantum information processing. The core idea is to encode the problem into a network and propagate quantum particles within. The entanglement of the many-body state due to interference between sites of the network brings, at the appropriate time, to a desired answer/observable. Recent implementations with optical photons or trapped ions and atoms have brought this theoretical process to the forefront of fundamental and applied quantum engineering. In parallel, superconducting devices are experiencing a renaissance due to modern understanding of materials, fundamental physics of superconductivity and fabrication techniques. The coherence times of superconducting qubits have improved by almost 5 (!) orders of magnitude over the past ten years. Recent developments include single microwave sources and detectors, quantum-limited amplifiers, heterodyne techniques for measurement and state tomography. Building such a network involves significant challenges, both fundamental and technical. On the fundamental level I intend to improve coherence times of our devices by advanced material science characterization, simulation tools and rapid turn-around characterization. My group will build a "quantum compiler" system for designing new layouts, bridging abstract design to implementation. On the technical level we will implement a flip chip bias circuit to overcome site inhomogeneity and for evolving and measuring results. This will be an enabling system for a broad range of quantum information processing applications and fundamental experiments, with unprecedented computational power and flexibility.
Galaxy formation through the eyes of globular clusters (CLUSTERS)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Universe sciences
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2013-11-01
End date: 2019-10-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1499863.0
EU funding (EUR): 1499863.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

Globular clusters (GCs) are among the first baryonic structures to form at a redshift of 10 and they witnessed the earliest phases of galaxy formation. Despite their ubiquity and importance for our understanding of the stellar initial mass function, star formation and chemical evolution in the early Universe, their origin is shrouded in mystery. They could have formed in gas rich discs, similarly to young massive clusters (YMCs) that we see forming today in starburst environments; or they could require a more exotic environment such as the centre of dark matter ``mini-haloes". The Milky Way GCs are resolved into their constituent stellar population making them the obvious place to look for clues. Their pristine properties are, however, affected by a Hubble time of dynamical evolution within an evolving Milky Way. In this proposal I present three projects to determine the initial properties of GCs, allowing them to be used as robust probes of early star formation, stellar evolution and cosmology. Specifically, I will: (1) dynamically evolve YMCs on a star-by-star basis and achieve a complete census of the fate of the clusters and their debris (``cold" streams) within the framework of the hierarchical assembly of the Milky Way; (2) I will develop an extremely fast cluster evolution algorithm to do population synthesis of (globular) star clusters which will uniquely establish their initial masses, densities and the corresponding distributions; and (3) I will break the degeneracy of a dark matter halo, tidal heating and alternative gravity laws on the kinematics of GCs and determine whether Milky Way GCs contain dark matter, or not. Galactic archaeology is entering a Golden Age. ALMA is operational and already putting constraints on the formation of YMCs and Gaia is due to fly next year. The three novel projects presented here will pave the way and prepare for the wealth of unprecedented data.
Synthetic Confined Environments as Tools for Manipulating Chemical Reactivities and Preparing New Nanostructures (CONFINEDCHEM)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Materials and Synthesis
Countries involved: Israel
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2013-10-01
End date: 2018-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1499992.0
EU funding (EUR): 1499992.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Nature has long inspired chemists with its abilities to stabilize ephemeral chemical species, to perform chemical reactions with unprecedented rates and selectivities, and to synthesize complex molecules and fascinating inorganic nanostructures. What natural systems consistently exploit - which is yet fundamentally different from how chemists perform reactions - is their aspect of nanoscale confinement. The goal of the proposed research program is to integrate the worlds of organic and inorganic colloidal chemistry by means of manipulating chemical reactivities and synthesizing novel molecules and nanostructures inside synthetic confined environments created using novel, unconventional approaches based on inorganic, nanostructured building blocks. The three types of confined spaces we propose are as follows: 1) nanopores within reversibly self-assembling colloidal crystals ("dynamic nanoflasks"), 2) cavities of bowl-shaped metallic nanoparticles (NPs), and 3) surfaces of spherical NPs. By taking advantage of these unique tools, we will attempt to develop, respectively, 1) a conceptually new method for catalyzing chemical reactions using light, 2) nanoscale inclusion chemistry (a field based on host-guest "complexes" assembled form nanosized components) and 3) to use NPs as platforms for the development of new organic reactions. While these objectives are predominantly of a fundamental nature, they can easily evolve into a variety of practical applications. Specifically, we will pursue diverse goals such as the preparation of 1) a new family of inverse opals (with potentially fascinating optical and mechanical properties), 2) artificial chaperones (NPs assisting in protein folding), and 3) size- and shape-controlled polymeric vesicles. Overall, it is believed that this marriage of organic and colloidal chemistry has the potential to change the fundamental way we perform chemical reactions, paving the way to the discovery of new phenomena and unique structures.

Keywords: self-assembly,nanocrystals,photoswitchable,dynamic self-assembly,colloidal crystals,confinement,galvanic replacement
How do we keep apart internally generated mental images from externally induced percepts? Dissociating mental imagery, working memory and conscious perception. (BRAINIMAGES)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: The Human Mind and its complexity
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-02-01
End date: 2019-05-31
Duration (months): 64.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1280680.0
EU funding (EUR): 1280680.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Conscious experiences normally result from the flow of external input into our sensory systems. However, our minds are also able to create conscious percepts in the absence of any sensory stimulation; these internally generated percepts are referred to as mental images, and they have many similarities with real visual percepts; consequently, mental imagery is often referred to as “seeing in the mind’s eye”. Mental imagery is also believed to be closely related to working memory, a mechanism which can maintain “offline” representations of visual stimuli no longer in the observer’s view, as both involve internal representations of previously seen visual attributes. Indeed, visual imagery is often thought of as a conscious window into the content of memory representations. Imagery, working memory, and conscious perception are thus thought to rely on very similar mechanisms. However, in everyday life we are generally able to keep apart the constructs of our imagination from real physical events; this begs the question of how the brain distinguishes internal mental images from externally induced visual percepts. To answer this question, the proposed work aims to isolate the cortical mechanisms associated uniquely with WM and imagery independently of each other and independently of the influence of external conscious percepts. Furthermore, by the use of neuroimaging and brain stimulation, we aim to determine the cortical mechanisms which keep apart internally generated and externally induced percepts, in both health and disease. This is a question of great clinical interest, as the ability to distinguish the perceived from the imagined is impoverished in psychotic disorders. In addition to revealing the mechanisms underlying this confusion, the present project aims to alleviate it in psychotic patients by the use of brain stimulation. The project will thus significantly improve our understanding of these cognitive processes and will also have clinical implications.
Harnessing Cavitation for Therapy (THERACAV)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Diagnostic tools, therapies and public health
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2013-10-01
End date: 2018-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1453180.0
EU funding (EUR): 1453180.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

Focused Ultrasound Surgery (FUS) is rapidly emerging as a technique setting the gold-standard for the treatment of a wide range of diseases, including cancer. Current practise relies on the conversion of acoustic energy to thermal, for localised and minimally-invasive ablation with non-ionising radiation. Cavitation (the formation, and subsequent pressure driven dynamics, of bubbles) is a common occurrence at the high intensities typically employed for FUS. The extremely rapid, often violent evolution of cavitation in tissue exposed to focused ultrasound, poses a high risk of collateral damage to healthy tissue proximal to the site of pathology. TheraCav will demonstrate cavitation can be controlled and harnessed, to redefine the remit of FUS to include targeted drug delivery and rapid ablation formation via enhanced heating. Conceptually, cavitation could act to significantly permeabilise targeted tissue, rendering specific volumes highly susceptible to drug delivery through extravasation from the vasculature. Moreover, cavitation may actively pump and promote drug transport directly to the diseased tissue. If cavitation is to fulfil this potential, however, it is crucial that precise monitoring and control strategies are developed, demonstrating that it can be safely introduced and utilised tissue. Through a series of novel and ambitious objectives, TheraCav will develop techniques and devices to deliver this capability, calibrated against a recent innovation that has allowed the direct observation of cavitation at unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. A series of translational work packages will test the monitoring and control strategies developed, in tissue-mimicking materials and ultimately soft-embalmed cadaver models, for anatomical verification. Finally, a radical and highly ambitious objective of activating photodynamic therapy drug compounds, via cavitation sonoluminescence and reactive oxygen species production, will be investigated.

Keywords: cavitation,cloud control,focused ultrasound surgery,high intensity focused ultrasound,acoustic detection,sonoluminescence,photodynamic therapy
A collaborative platform to document performance composition: from conceptual structures in the backstage to customizable visualizations in the front-end (BLACKBOX)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Cultures and cultural production
Countries involved: Portugal
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-05-01
End date: 2019-10-31
Duration (months): 66.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1378200.0
EU funding (EUR): 1378200.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

The global performing arts community is requiring innovative systems to: a) document, transmit and preserve the knowledge contained in choreographic-dramaturgic practices; b) assist artists with tools to facilitate their compositional processes, preferably on a collaborative basis. The existing digital archives of performing arts mostly function as conventional e-libraries, not allowing higher degrees of interactivity or active user intervention. They rarely contemplate accessible video annotation tools or provide relational querying functionalities based on artist-driven conceptual principles or idiosyncratic ontologies. This proposal endeavours to fill that gap and create a new paradigm for the documentation of performance composition. It aims at the analysis of artists’ unique conceptual structures, by combining the empirical insights of contemporary creators with research theories from Multimodal Communication and Digital Media studies. The challenge is to design a model for a web-based collaborative platform enabling both a robust representation of performance composition methods and novel visualization technologies to support it. This can be done by analysing recurring body movement patterns and by fostering online contributions of users (a.o. performers and researchers) to the multimodal annotations stored in the platform. To accomplish this goal, two subjacent components must be developed: 1. the production of a video annotation-tool to allow artists in rehearsal periods to take notes over video in real-time and share them via the collaborative platform; 2. the linguistic analysis of a corpus of invited artists’ multimodal materials as source for the extraction of indicative conceptual structures, which will guide the architectural logics and interface design of the collaborative platform software.The outputs of these two components will generate critical case-studies to help understanding the human mind when engaged in cultural production processes.

Keywords: language use gesture studies digital media performing arts analysis/documentation multimodal communication/corpora cognition video annotation cultural and digital heritage arts&science crossings
Unilateralism and the protection of global interests: opportunities and limits of the exercise of state jurisdiction (UNIJURIS)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Institutions, values, beliefs and behaviour
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2013-11-01
End date: 2018-10-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1341529.0
EU funding (EUR): 1341529.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

In the 20th century, states have increasingly sought to apply their laws to situations and persons beyond their borders. They typically did so to protect their own interests from harm spilling over their borders. Recently, however, states appear to be giving their laws ‘extraterritorial’ application to protect global interests, not only when prosecuting international criminals, but also by enacting emissions trading schemes to tackle global warming, by taking sanctions against foreign vessels involved in illegal fishing on the high seas docking in their port, and by fighting foreign corrupt practices with a view to furthering good governance in developing countries. Thus, it appears that a novel principle of jurisdiction is crystallizing that protects global interests through unilateral application of domestic (or regional) law. It is the aim of this research to study this development in-depth, and to examine in particular whether, and under what circumstances, international law countenances such an exercise of unilateral jurisdiction that is aimed at the protection of global interests. The project consists of two pillars. Pillar 1 studies three cases of states or regional organizations unilaterally applying their own laws to (partly) foreign situations considered as threatening global interests: (a) the exercise of unilateral jurisdiction aimed at mitigating climate change; (b) the exercise of port state jurisdiction aimed at protecting sustainable fishing and biological diversity on the high seas; (c) the exercise of unilateral jurisdiction to tackle foreign corruption practices. Pillar 2 is synthetic in nature, and assesses whether, and to what extent, general rules of jurisdiction and jurisdictional restraint concerning the protection of global interests are developing across various fields, including but not limited to the fields studied in Pillar 1.
Beyond structure: integrated computational and experimental approach to Ensemble-Based Drug Design. (EBDD)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Physical and Analytical Chemical sciences
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2013-StG, 2013)
Start date: 2013-12-01
End date: 2018-11-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1382202.0
EU funding (EUR): 1382202.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Although protein dynamics plays an essential role in function, it is rarely considered explicitly in current structure-based approaches to drug design. Here I propose the computer-aided design of ligands by modulation of protein dynamics, or equivalently, protein structural ensembles. The detailed understanding of ligand-induced perturbations of protein dynamics that will result from this study is crucial not just to accurately predicting binding affinities and tackling "undruggable" targets, but also to understanding protein allostery. Three major aims will be pursued during this project. First, I will combine concepts from chemoinformatics and non-equilibrium thermodynamics to detect cryptic "druggable" small molecule binding sites in computed structural ensembles. New computational methods will be developed to predict how binding at these putative sites is likely to influence protein function. This will enable rational approaches to allosteric control of protein function. Second, new classes of non-equilibrium sampling algorithms will be developed to improve by 2-3 orders of magnitude the speed of computation of protein/ligand structural ensembles by molecular simulations. This will enable routine consideration of protein flexibility in ligand optimisation problems. Third, I will address with the above methods a frontier problem in molecular recognition: the rational design of protein isoform-specific ligands. To achieve this goal, I will integrate computation with experiments and focus efforts on the therapeutically relevant cyclophilin protein family. Experimental work will involve the use of purchased or custom-synthesized competitive and allosteric ligands in enzymatic assays, calorimetry and crystal structure analyses. Overall, this project proposes fundamental advances in our ability to quantify and engineer protein-ligand interactions, therefore expanding opportunities for the development of future small molecule therapeutics.

Keywords: protein-ligand interactions,allostery,molecular simulations,free energy calculations,computer-aided drug design,cyclophilins