Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Blockchain protocol for responsible mineral sourcing (Minespider)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Industrial Leadership
Programme: Innovation in SMEs
Action type: SME instrument
Countries involved: Switzerland
Call: SME instrument (H2020-SMEInst-2018-2020-1, 2018)
Start date: 2018-12-01
End date: 2019-05-31
Duration (months): 6.0
Total project cost (EUR): 71429.0
EU funding (EUR): 50000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Minespider is the first fully integrated, blockchain solution which offers the conflict mineral sector the means to source responsibly, ensuring no breaches of human rights in at-risk origin countries. Minerals like gold, tin, tantalum, tungsten or copper are essential components in most electronic devices today, and tech giants like Microsoft, Apple or Nokia rely on them to develop their products. The usage of these valuable ores, however, poses crucial ethical and legal risks for all companies involved, since many of them are extracted from conflict- torn countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, further funding violence. Minespider answers to companies’ CSR concerns and upcoming legislation, by transforming today’s due diligence on mineral sourcing from a costly service, into a commodity, allowing mines, processors, transporters and other stakeholders to capitalize on their ethical activity. Minespider was developed based on an innovative opened, free, decentralized blockchain protocol and uses a DApp to allow companies to create and sell certification data. This way, Minespider incentivises all stakeholders in the sector to responsible sourcing straight from extraction and following up along the entire chain. The team has extensive experience in the domain area and aims to scale the business to €50M to serve 2.000 active users by 2024, covering mineral supply chains worldwide.

Keywords: supply chain management,environment,pollution and climate,green procurement,manufacturing,international trade,collaborative systems,digital services,internet services and applications,networks
Pinpointing novel molecular and cellular functions generated by retroelement onco-exaptation (RETROFIT)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Panel description: Organ and tissue physiology, comparative physiology, physiology of ageing, pathophysiology, interorgan and tissue communication, endocrinology, nutrition, metabolism, interaction with the microbiome, non-communicable diseases including cancer (and except disorders of the nervous system and immunity-related diseases)
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call: ERC ADVANCED GRANT (ERC-2020-ADG, 2020)
Start date: 2021-12-01
End date: 2026-11-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2483691.0
EU funding (EUR): 2483691.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Exaptation, the co-option of endogenous retroelements (EREs) for new molecular and cellular functions that confer a host fitness advantage, is a major force in evolution, but may also be exploited, through onco-exaptation, by tumour cells to promote the oncogenic process. There are over 4 million well-recognised and annotated individual ERE integrations in the human genome. However, their participation at the level of the more complex transcriptome is far less well understood and, therefore, the number of onco-exaptation events is likely vastly underestimated. To allow detection and quantitation of ERE transcription, we have recently de novo assembled the cancer transcriptome. This resulted in a doubling of the known transcriptome, particularly of unannotated or partially annotated transcripts derived from or overlapping with EREs. Here, we propose to utilise this extended view of ERE transcription as the framework for: •building a genome-wide map of functionally validated ERE onco-exaptation events and •pinpointing novel, targetable functions of EREs in immunity, cancer and their intersection Although we identified thousands of novel ERE-overlapping transcripts in cancer, the majority are likely the consequence of transcriptional activation of normally silent EREs, with little or no impact on host cell function. Impactful and inconsequential ERE integrations will be distinguished based on a number of features, including association with cancer overall survival or response to immunotherapy, impact on adjacent gene function, evolutionary conservation and functional domain and folding predictions. Postulated function will ultimately be tested extensively in in vitro cancer cell lines, ex vivo cancer patient material and in vivo mouse cancer models, tailored to the relevant onco-exaptation event. The modification of existing gene function or the creation of new function by ERE onco-exaptation will undoubtedly uncover new targets and opportunities for cancer treatment.

Keywords: endogenous retroelements,cancer,onco exaptation
Methodologies for Researcher Led INnovations (MERLIN)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Industrial Leadership
Programme: Information and Communication Technologies
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: Spain,Spain,Poland,Lithuania,United Kingdom
Call: Startup Europe for Growth and Innovation Radar (H2020-ICT-2017-1, 2017)
Start date: 2017-12-01
End date: 2020-02-29
Duration (months): 27.0
Total project cost (EUR): 996137.5
EU funding (EUR): 996137.5
Participants: 6
Project status: CLOSED

MERLIN aims to support ICT researchers, SMEs and startups across to realise the full potential and impact of their research and development outputs by crafting them into innovations and achieving market validation using modern needs-first, market-led methodologies like Business Model Canvas, Customer Discovery, Lean Hardware, etc. The project will provide training, networking and follow-on support through 43 practical workshops, 4 webinars (on SME growth and PPP business models), 5 international conference workshops and 8 meetups with potential customers and commercial partners. MERLIN will have over 1250 attendees at in-person workshops and meetups across the four principal nodes of Madrid (ES), Vilnius (LT), Poznań (PL) and Cambridge (UK) and the secondary nodes of Berlin (DE), Warsaw (PL), Tallinn (EE), Bucharest (RO), international webinars and international ICT conferences in Europe. For sustainability, and to increase the participants’ success in bringing to market their innovation, MERLIN will integrate participants with existing national (e.g. Innovate UK, Enterprise Ireland, CDTI) and European initiatives (Startup Europe, ERDF, EFSI, etc.) designed to support early entrepreneurship, product development, market access, seed financing and microfinancing for continued support on their journey to market validation and company growth. The project will also identify and promote high-potential innovators through attendance at Startup Europe events to access other European startup ecosystems, entrepreneurs, investors and accelerators. These activities will see over 160 new business model canvases developed, 1040 individual 1-on-1s with potential commercial customers, serial entrepreneurs and business angels, 250 applications to regional, national and international support actions and the creation of 30 new ventures in the lifetime of the project with an anticipated further 60-100 in the following 3 years’ post project, creating over 1200 jobs in the medium-term.

Keywords: entrepreneurship,spin offs,start up companies,accelerators,incubators,angel investment
HIGH PERFORMANCE POLYHYDROXYALKANOATES BASED PACKAGING TO MINIMISE FOOD WASTE (YPACK)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Societal Challenges
Programme: Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine and maritime and inland water research and the bioeconomy
Theme: Sustainable and competitive agri-food sector for a safe and healthy diet
Action type: Innovation actions
Countries involved: Spain,Spain,Italy,Spain,Spain,Spain,Spain,Israel,Spain,Türkiye,Belgium,Belgium,North Macedonia,Belgium,Hungary,Netherlands,Portugal,Portugal,Portugal,United Kingdom,Portugal
Call: Innovative solutions for sustainable food packaging (H2020-SFS-2017-1, 2017)
Start date: 2017-11-01
End date: 2021-04-30
Duration (months): 42.0
Total project cost (EUR): 7277671.25
EU funding (EUR): 5996591.02
Participants: 24
Project status: CLOSED

The main objective of YPACK is the pre-industrial scale up and validation of two innovative food packaging solutions (thermoformed tray and flow pack bag) based on PHA, with active and passive barrier properties. New packaging will use food industry by-products (cheese whey and almond shells), assure the biodegradability and recyclability, and reduce food waste, in the frame of the EU Circular Economy strategy. YPACK will use a holistic approach and methodology involving different knowledge areas: Development of packaging solutions (Production of PHBV layers, compounding, prototyping, Industrial Validation), Product Validation (Quality / Shelf life), Social approach (Customer profiling, Dissemination, Policies & Regulatory) and Market Assessment (Business study and Risk assessment). YPACK is aligned with the EU Circular Economy strategy, including the use of raw bio-based food industry by-products, LCA studies, recyclability & biodegradability of packaging and trying to reduce Food Waste. The project is constructed in line with the Responsible Research and Innovation guidelines of the European Commission. The project has a total duration of 36 months. Several processes related to the production of multilayered passive and active systems based on raw PHBV will be optimised and scaled up to pre-industrial size to validate the production of the proposed packaging solutions for extend the shelf life of selected food products. They consist in: i) a multilayer tray involving an inner active layer, and ii) a multilayer flow pack with improved barrier properties. A consumer profiling and market study will be performed at the first stage of the project in order to identify consumers´ preferences, market needs and match them with the new EU regulations and packaging materials breakthroughs.

Keywords: food waste,phbv,prototyping,environment,resources and sustainability,food safety,sustainable design,life cycle analysis,piloting,sustainable innovation,market uptake assessment
CodeSphere - Discovering Therapeutic Nanoparticles by Molecular Encoding (CodeSphere)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Proof of concept grants
Action type: ERC actions
Countries involved: Denmark
Call: ERC-Proof of Concept (ERC-2017-PoC, 2017)
Start date: 2017-09-01
End date: 2019-02-28
Duration (months): 18.0
Total project cost (EUR): 149951.0
EU funding (EUR): 149951.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

There is currently no high-throughput method to efficiently identify and optimize nanoparticle delivery of therapeutic relevant cargo such as drugs or mRNA before progression through costly clinical development. This is in stark contrast to the situation for small molecules and antibodies, where screening technologies such as high-throughput small molecule screening and phage display in the last decades have proven very successful to aid and drive drug discovery and development. Our project ‘CodeSphere’ seeks to develop a method for DNA-tagging of nanoparticles to efficiently optimize nanoparticles on several parameters in parallel from libraries which - in time - will be at least 1.000-10.000 larger than the capability of current state-of-the-art screening methods. The project will initially work towards the generation of a library of > 1.000 different T cell targeted liposomal nanoparticles containing mRNA encoding anti-cancer proteins. This library of DNA-tagged nanoparticles will be screened in “one-pot” in human blood to identify nanoparticles with optimal characteristics to efficiently deliver mRNA to specific cell populations. Through such a technology, one could gain knowledge on which particle design is most optimal including stability in blood, ‘stealth’ evasion of the immune system, optimal systemic circulation time, efficiency in reaching the target tissue (e.g. cancer lesion) and efficiency in delivering the drug or other cargo. The technology can be applied to whole blood preparations, primary cells, cell lines, and even as in vivo screening in whole organisms.

Keywords: drug delivery,nanoparticles,liposomes,high throughput screening,immune receptors,molecular encoding
Post-transition metal chalcogenides: 2D nanoelectronics and photonics (PTMCnano)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Individual Fellowships (IF)-Standard European Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Physics
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2016, 2016)
Start date: 2017-09-18
End date: 2019-09-17
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 183454.8
EU funding (EUR): 183454.8
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Post-transition metal chalcogenides (PTMCs) such as InSe or GaSe are members of the rapidly expanding family of two-dimensional (2D) materials. Unlike graphene, they possess an electronic band gap, enabling electrostatic confinement of electrons by using local gate electrodes, and therefore the creation of quantum dots (QD). QDs can be employed as the bases for spin qubits, possible building blocks of solid state quantum computers. Recent results of the host suggest that PTMCs may surpass other gapped 2D crystals in electron mobility, making possible the fabrication of QDs of exceptional quality. Moreover, their near-direct band gap enables their use in photovoltaic, photodetection and LED applications, and opens the way for interfacing photons with spin qubits, essential in long-distance communication between quantum computers. The proposed objectives entail the realization of electrostatic confinement to study state of the art PTMC QDs, and testing their viability as spin qubits via magnetoconductance measurements, and also the investigation of the electro-optical response of 2D heterostructures to address single photon to electron conversion in QDs, and possibilities towards application in communication, sensing and solar power conversion. During the fellowship, the Researcher will have the unique opportunity to learn from pioneers of the research on 2D materials. He will master the cutting-edge stacking technique of the host, necessary to fabricate high-quality 2D heterostructures, and other crucial skills in this rapidly developing field. Furthermore, the Researcher will expand his knowledge on electro-optical characterization methods of nanophotonic devices, and on the physics of 2D crystals and light-matter interaction. The training and the research on QDs and photonic devices will be a significant boost to the Researcher’s career, and give him the necessary skills and experience for the foundation of a future quantum electro-optical research group.

Keywords: 2d material,heterostructure,nanoconstriction,quantum point contact,quantum dot,spin qubit,photodetector,solar cell
Thermoelectric detector based on superconductor-ferromagnet heterostructures (SUPERTED)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Future and Emerging Technologies (FET)
Theme: EIC Pathfinder
Destination: Novel ideas for radically new technologies
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Spain,Italy,Spain,Finland,Finland,France
Call: FET-Open research and innovation actions (H2020-FETOPEN-1-2016-2017, 2017)
Start date: 2018-09-01
End date: 2023-02-28
Duration (months): 54.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2944728.75
EU funding (EUR): 2944728.75
Participants: 6
Project status: SIGNED

Superconducting detectors, such as the transition edge sensor and the kinetic inductance detector, are some of the most sensitive detectors of electromagnetic radiation and they have found application in various fields ranging from astrophysical observations to security imaging and materials characterization. The present tendency is to increase the number of sensor pixels to allow for a simultaneous imaging and spectroscopy in the video rate of the measured object. However, increasing the number of pixels is hampered by the technical difficulty of fabricating and controlling the bias lines needed next to each pixel in these types of sensors, along with the heating problem associated with them. In this project, we propose to study a new type of sensor that overcomes this limitation as it is based on the thermoelectric conversion of the radiation signal to electrically measurable one. This approach is based on the newly found giant thermoelectric effect taking place in superconductor/ferromagnet heterostructures. Utilizing this effect, the sensor pixels can be self-powered by the measured radiation, and therefore extra bias lines are not needed (patent pending for the detector concept). Within the project, we aim to establish a proof of concept of this device by (i) fabricating such detector elements, and (ii) characterizing single pixels of thermoelectric detectors for X-ray and THz imaging via approaches that are scalable to large arrays. Within the project, we also actively seek to establish technology transfer to pave the way for the possible commercial application of such sensors.

Keywords: imaging,thz sensing,x ray sensors,thermoelectric detector,thermoelectric heat engine,superconducting spintronics
MOBILITY AS A SERVICE PLATFORM for employers and individuals. (MAAS)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Industrial Leadership
Programme: Innovation in SMEs
Action type: SME instrument
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call: SME instrument (H2020-SMEInst-2018-2020-1, 2019)
Start date: 2019-08-01
End date: 2019-11-30
Duration (months): 4.0
Total project cost (EUR): 71429.0
EU funding (EUR): 50000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

UN predicts that more than 68% of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050. This increases pressure on already overburdened urban transportation systems resulting in increased congestion which is costing countries between 2% and 4% of GDP. Leveraging on technological advancements, cities are moving towards multimodal shared transportation services. However, the transportation industry across Europe suffers from country dependency and separate treatment of transport modalities with travellers having to change from one mobility provider platform/ App to another in order to plan, book, travel and pay a multimodal trip within and across countries. This limits the implementation of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS). To provide employees with more flexibility, achieve sustainability goals and address accessibility and parking problems, employers want to implement new flexible mobility policies with incentives for other travel behaviour. E.g. cycling, public transport, ride sharing and electrical car sharing. The execution of such polices requires a robust and user-friendly digital solution to support employees and handle the complex administration for employers. Based in Netherlands, Mobility Concept is an SME established in 2011, specialising in the management of mobility policies and services for employers, employees and individuals. It has developed an innovative cloud-based MaaS platform (MOBCON) to provide users with an optimal travel experience through a single platform and mobile app to plan, book and pay for services from a single payment channel when travelling within and across countries. Employers are also able to manage their innovative mobility policies to realise their sustainability goals. MOBCON facilitates a smart sustainable transport system to make cities more liveable through reduced congestion, CO2 emissions, noise pollution and parking requirements.

Keywords: mobility as a service,congestion,shared transportation,sustainable cities,smart cities,transportation,multi modal transportation
Strain Engineering of Light-Emitting Nanodomes (SELENe)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Individual Fellowships (IF)-Standard European Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Physics
Countries involved: Italy
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2018, 2018)
Start date: 2019-09-01
End date: 2021-08-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 171473.28
EU funding (EUR): 171473.28
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

When transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are thinned down to monolayer thickness, they exhibit a direct bang gap at the K and K’ points of the Brillouin zone, which represents a binary quantum degree of freedom, referred to as valley pseudospin. The fabrication of high quality samples is currently based on the mechanical exfoliation of monolayer flakes from bulk crystal. While this approach gives excellent results at the laboratory scale, it lacks potential for upscaling, in particular if one wants to achieve a systematic coupling with surrounding photonic structures. This drawback can be overcome by controllably creating single-layer thick domes by performing hydrogen irradiation of a multilayer TMD sample. SELENe aims at exploiting this fabrication approach to perform a paradigm-shifting experimental activity, which merges the investigation of so far unexplored fundamental electronic properties of TMDs, and the first implementation of a practical interface between TMD-based emitters and basic photonic structures. We will perform a systematic investigation of the optical properties of monolayer-thick domes formed after H irradiation and extend this by controllably applying strain via piezoelectric actuators to H-inflated domes. We will investigate the influence of the strain also on interlayer excitons formed across van der Waals heterostructures. We will achieve control of the emission intensity of the interlayer exciton in domes formed in heterobilayers, because the interlayer distance can be varied acting on the temperature, due to the condensation of H2 trapped into the dome. Finally, it is possible to selectively expose prescribed regions of a sample to H irradiation by defining openings in H-opaque masks. We will take advantage of this approach by making use of electron-beam lithography to fabricate nanometer-sized domes, which we will then exploit as site-controlled emitters and for coupling into waveguides and photonic crystal cavities.

Keywords: transition metal dichalcogenides,strain engineering,van der waals heterostructures,single photon emission,hydrogen irradiation