Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
sINGle microwave photon dEtection for hybrid quaNtum Information prOcessing and quantUm enhanced Sensing (INGENIOUS)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Condensed Matter Physics
Panel description: Structure, electronic properties, fluids, nanosciences, biological physics
Countries involved: France
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2021-STG, 2021)
Start date: 2022-12-01
End date: 2027-11-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1840536.0
EU funding (EUR): 1840536.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The wave/particle duality is one of the counter-intuitive traits of quantum mechanics. The fundamental constituents of matter and light can be either apprehended as corpuscules or waves depending on the choice of the measurement apparatus. In the case of light, one can either decide to measure the quadrature of the electromagnetic field or count the photons impacting the detector. These two modalities come with pros and cons, the first one is sensitive to both the phase and the amplitude of the field but at the cost of a fundamental noise associated to vacuum fluctuations while the latter is only sensitive to the energy of the field but at the Photons lie at the heart of the human experience; they are the most direct way to sense our immediate material environment. A light source irradiates material objects in its surroundings and depending on their composition, materials will re-emit the incident light with slight variations in intensity and color. In the course of the last century, the meaning of imaging has been considerably broadened, scientific and technological advances have enabled the detection of single quanta of light from further away, at smaller scales, and on a considerable enlarge portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. At one extremity of the spectrum, the field of microwave quantum optics (1-10 GHz) has emerged as a powerful tool to probe quantum systems. We have recently demonstrated high-performance single microwave photon detection based on elementary superconducting circuits. Based on this novel method, a new window on new material systems is opened at unprecedented sensitivities. This proposal aims at the improvement of the newly developed single microwave photon detector for the exploration of new luminescent systems in the microwave domain. In particular, the detection of individual paramagnetic electron spins for quantum computing and quantum-enhanced sensing applications; and the search of one of the leading dark-matter candidates, axions.
Co-designing Holistic Forest-based Policy Pathways for Climate Change Mitigation (ForestPaths)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Climate, Energy and Mobility
Theme: Climate
Destination: Climate sciences and responses for the transformation towards climate neutrality
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Finland,Sweden,Germany,Netherlands,Belgium,Italy,Romania,Bulgaria,United Kingdom
Call: The contribution of forest management to climate action: pathways, trade-offs and co-benefits (HORIZON-CL5-2021-D1-01, 2021)
Start date: 2022-09-01
End date: 2027-02-28
Duration (months): 54.0
Total project cost (EUR): 5594787.5
EU funding (EUR): 5594787.0
Participants: 17
Project status: SIGNED

The EU target to significantly reduce its emissions by 2030 and become climate neutral by 2050 requires new mitigation measures within all sectors. Clear policy pathways are needed that outline alternative trajectories for European forests and the forest-based sector towards a climate-neutral and resilient society and economy. ForestPaths will co-design, quantify and evaluate holistic forest-based policy pathways to optimize the contribution of forests and the forest-based sector to climate change mitigation, while considering the need to adapt forests to climate change, conserve biodiversity and sustain forest ecosystem services provisioning. ForestPaths goes beyond the state-of-the-art by finding feasible Climate & Biodiversity-Smart (CBS) options across Europe, suggesting effective mitigation actions, and analysing their co-benefits and trade-offs with biodiversity and ecosystem services. ForestPaths engages with policymakers, forest practitioners, regional and national authorities, forest-based sector, certification bodies, researchers, and civil society in a co-design process to develop policy pathways and CBS options and maximize their practical usability, transparency, and trustworthiness. Openly available through an online policy support platform, pathways will be quantified based on a next-generation assessment framework of models, tools, and data. This framework will consider forest growth, climate change risks, as well as interactions between forests and the forest-based sector and economic system, supported by state-of-the art monitoring of forest disturbances, composition, and structure. The multidisciplinary consortium consists of research institutes, universities, and SMEs from across Europe, with leading expertise on climate, energy and biodiversity policies, complex system modelling, life-cycle analysis, remote sensing, disturbance ecology, forest and GHG inventories, social sciences, stakeholder process and communications.

Keywords: forest,policy,pathways,mitigation,biodiversity,integrated modelling,remote sensing,stakeholders
Resonant excitation of phonons in semiconductor nanostructures exploiting open optical cavity (REPOC)

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: Poland
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2023 (HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01, 2023)
Start date: 2024-09-01
End date: 2026-08-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 155793.6
EU funding (EUR): 155793.6
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Phonons are vibrations of atoms in solids that play a significant role in material science and solid-state physics. High-frequency phonons have gained attention in the fields of quantum technology and nanophononics. Their small wavelengths make them compatible with quantum nano-devices and their frequencies can surpass modern computation speeds. This potential makes phonons useful for qubits, quantum memories, hybrid systems, and elements in quantum computing networks. Exploring phonons and their interactions with other excitations is important for advancements in solid-state physics and quantum technology. The project focuses on using a novel experimental method based on the optical open cavity to excite and detect coherent phonons in materials from the II-VI group of semiconductors. We plan to grow samples with an acoustic cavity enclosed in Distributed Bragg Reflectors, which support the cavity acoustic mode. By placing the sample inside the open optical cavity and adjusting its length, we can sweep the energy of the excitation photon, allowing comprehensive studies on the influence of photon energy on phonon generation efficiency. Additionally, we can achieve quasi-resonant excitation of phonons in the time domain by adjusting the length of the cavity in a way that the round-trip time of the laser pulse matches the frequency of the generated phonons, resonantly pumping the desired phonon frequency supported by the acoustic cavity. This experimental scheme will allow us to enhance the efficiency of phonon excitation by exploiting four resonances for coherent phonon generation: acoustic cavity resonance, optical cavity resonance, excitonic resonance, and in-phase (temporal) resonance excitation. As a result of the project we expect to provide a comprehensive study on the efficiency of the high-frequency coherent phonon generation in the II-VI semiconductor nanostructures obtained by innovative experimental technique exploiting optical open cavity.

Keywords: phonons,photons,excitons,open cavity,acoustics,optics,collective excitations
Climate and conflict in the Eastern Pacific: exploring a possible catastrophic coastal El Niño event and its impact on ancient Peruvian societies (320-200 BCE) through an interdisciplinary approach. (PACHACUTI)

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: Environment and Geosciences
Countries involved: Netherlands,Peru,Germany
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2025-09-01
End date: 2027-08-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 232916.16
EU funding (EUR): 232916.16
Participants: 3
Project status: SIGNED

Coastal El Niño (CEN) events have affected the northern half of Peru's coast for millennia bringing very warm climate conditions that lead to heavy rainfall and floods. In the central Peruvian desert of Casma, the presence of numerous fortified settlements dating from around 320-200 BCE suggests that their construction occurred during a period of warfare and regional instability. However, the reasons behind this instability remain unclear. The larger of these fortresses, Chankillo, may hold the key to understand when and why these structures were built. Well-preserved wooden lintels in Chankillo’s structures provide an opportunity to study the environmental past. A preliminary tree-ring width study revealed an anomalous wide ring in timbers from the lintels just before Chankillo’s construction, which could be the result of a CEN-induced catastrophic episode of heavy rainfall. This extreme CEN may have sparked instability and warfare, shaping central Peruvian history around 2,300 years ago. PACHACUTI aims to determine whether a catastrophic CEN event took place around 320-200 BCE, before Chankillo’s construction, by combining dendroarchaeology, annually-resolved stable oxygen isotope (18O) analysis and radiocarbon wiggle-matching. This ground-breaking interdisciplinary approach will use samples from Chankillo’s architectural timbers to develop an 18O chronology capturing hydroclimate variability over the 120 years before Chankillo’s construction. This novel record will encapsulate the frequency, magnitude and impacts of past CEN events during this period, offering insights into the climatic context surrounding Chankillo’s origins. Furthermore, it will also serve to date other archaeological sites in the region. If proven, this discovery will reveal the oldest known CEN event with a significant societal impact, highlighting the need to improve mitigation strategies to reduce the impact of future extreme hydroclimatic events for modern societies.

Keywords: dendrochronology
A Global Network for the Search for High Frequency Gravitational Waves (GravNet)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Synergy grants
Action type: ERC actions
Countries involved: Germany,Spain,Italy
Call: ERC SYNERGY GRANTS (ERC-2024-SyG, 2024)
Start date: 2025-03-01
End date: 2031-02-28
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 9875391.0
EU funding (EUR): 9875391.0
Participants: 4
Project status: SIGNED

The overarching goal of the GravNet project is to develop, test and deploy a novel experimental platform that could enable the first detection of gravitational waves (GWs) in the frequency range of MHz to GHz, thereby providing a new and unique window into astrophysical processes that have so far eluded observation. The first detection of gravitational waves by LIGO in 2015 ushered in a new era of fundamental physics. Since then, a network of ground-based GW interferometers has probed the frequency range from 10 Hz to 10 kHz, detecting nearly a hundred mergers of black-hole and neutron-star binaries. In 2023, a signal at much lower frequency, in the nHz band, was detected by timing radio signals from pulsars. The race is now on to explore other bands. Of particular interest in this context is access to the MHz-GHz range, as in this range signals may be generated copiously by events such as primordial-black-hole-merger, by the dynamics of ultra-light dark matter overdensities or violent phenomena in primordial cosmological times - all processes related to some of the most pressing open questions about our Universe. The use of cavities in strong magnetic fields has been identified as one of the most promising techniques to search for high-frequency gravitational waves. So far, efforts were focused on cavities with small volumes that are tuned to search for axion-like particles. By contrast, the GravNet scheme is based on combining different technologies and methodological approaches to measure synchronously cavity signals from multiple devices in magnetic fields operated as a network across Europe, increasing the sensitivity to high frequency GWs (HFGWs) by several orders of magnitude compared to current approaches. In this way, GravNet will open up a new, vast parameter space for gravitational-wave searches and might be the enabling step towards the first detection of HFGWs - with the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the Universe.

Keywords: high frequency gravitational waves,electromagnetic cavities,quantum sensors,sensor network,machine learning
INdustrialisation of Building Lifecycle data Accumulation, Numeracy and Capitalisation (INBLANC)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Climate, Energy and Mobility
Theme: Energy
Destination: Efficient, sustainable and inclusive energy use
Action type: Innovation actions
Partnership: B4P (co-programmed)
Countries involved: Netherlands,Cyprus,Denmark,Greece,Finland,Italy,Germany,Spain,Austria,Switzerland
Call: Innovative uses of lifecycle data for the management of buildings and buildings portfolios (Built4People Partnership) (HORIZON-CL5-2023-D4-02, 2023)
Start date: 2025-01-01
End date: 2028-06-30
Duration (months): 42.0
Total project cost (EUR): 6057948.34
EU funding (EUR): 4999391.45
Participants: 22
Project status: SIGNED

Significant challenges affecting the building and construction value chain are related to fragmentation and siloing. A systemic change is needed, catalysed by lifecycle perspectives, that will reveal interactions, opportunities, and threats. INBLANC will establish an open ecosystem focused on capitalising on the economy of building lifecycle data. This will be achieved through: The Accumulation framework, INBLANC prioritises low-cost data collection options and data extraction and inference, the consolidation of building information in Building Digital Logbook, as well as the creation and population of databases, interfaced with EU dataspaces through connectors. The Numeracy component will implement a Nexus strategy to map and operationalize interactions between different types of metrics: energy, human & societal, economy, environment & circularity and resilience, six Target Groups, encompassing the entire value chain, with focus on building owners and facility managers as actors with major decision-making capacity. The building lifecycle data Capitalisation toolset integrates high-added value services for the comprehensive management of: energy planning and operation, virtual facility management, quantified indoor health, low-carbon renovation planning and urban context integration. Actors in the ecosystem will be engaged across the value chain, through a holistic engagement strategy that will embed the project’s outcomes in current and future industrial, but also user needs. INBLANC will be demonstrated in six demo cases, reflecting six very different use-case scenarios, from heritage renovation, to education, to energy flexible neighbourhoods, public building portfolios, large scale health facilities and finally city-scale implementation. Through the ambitious demonstrations, feedback will be collected and incorporated into a system completion process to prove near-market readiness.

Keywords: ecosystem,building lifecycle,capitalisation service toolset,engagement,adoption,proptech,bankability
Deciphering the origins of cell differentiation and developmental gene regulation in animals (OriCellDiff)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
Panel description: For all organisms : Ecology, biodiversity, environmental change , evolutionary biology, behavioural ecology, microbial ecology , marine biology, ecophysiology, theoretical developments and mod elling
Countries involved: Ireland
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2023-STG, 2023)
Start date: 2024-04-01
End date: 2029-03-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1872506.0
EU funding (EUR): 1872506.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

During animal development the process of cell differentiation gives rise to terminally differentiated cell types with cell-type-specific gene expression programs. In the most closely related group to animals, the choanoflagellates, cell differentiation occurs but cells do not commit irreversibly to specific fates. Instead, they transition through cell identities as they progress through their life cycle, known as temporal cell differentiation. Animal cell differentiation is thought to have evolved from temporal differentiation, but the mechanisms are largely unknown due to a lack of information on the molecular processes underpinning temporal differentiation. This proposal will test the hypothesis that chromatin-based transcriptional regulation underlies temporal cell differentiation in choanoflagellates. Utilizing S. rosetta as a model, I will compare transcription and chromatin across cell types using genome-wide omics techniques. This will allow me to assess the role of different histone modifications in cell-fate transitions and discover whether various aspects of animal developmental gene regulation, e.g., the use of repressive histone modifications in cell-type-specific gene regulation, are also utilised in choanoflagellates. I will also examine the cis-regulatory landscape in S. rosetta and use both molecular and functional assays to examine the types of cis-regulatory elements present, and particularly if enhancer elements are used to regulate gene expression. Finally, I will test the role of selected chromatin regulators in temporal cell differentiation and cell-type-specific gene expression. This ground-breaking work will be the first to study these processes in choanoflagellates, thus pioneering the comparison between definitive cell differentiation, seen in animals, and choanoflagellate temporal differentiation. In a broader context, this will deliver fundamental new insights into the evolution of animal gene-regulation during development.

Keywords: choanoflagellates,holozoans,cell differentiation,evodevo,chromatin
RIPLEY: Reliable Intelligence for Precise Large-area soft robot to Environment Interaction control (RIPLEY)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Systems and Communication Engineering
Panel description: Electrical, electronic, communication, optical and systems engineering
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2024-STG, 2024)
Start date: 2025-01-01
End date: 2029-12-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1500000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

RIPLEY will pioneer the next generation of soft robots, empowering them for the first time to establish, maintain, and exploit multiple large-area contacts. Imagine assessing and fixing damages deep into a huge turbine without disassembling it. Today, this task is impossible. Five years from now, RIPLEY's intelligent soft robots will be capable of squeezing themselves into a narrow opening and reaching deep into the mechanical structure - like an octopus elegantly finding its way through a complex riff, embracing the rocks with its whole body to reach for a pray. These pragmatic outcomes will require a paradigm shift in the theory of soft robotic intelligence. Indeed, while on the one hand, soft robots are becoming increasingly capable of moving in free space, at the same, they fall short whenever simple environment-robot interactions arise. Critically, this limitation is the symptom of flows in the foundations of existing theories, and research in the field finds itself in a cul-de-sac from which it cannot get out by accumulating incremental steps. RIPLEY will solve this impasse by rebuilding soft robotic intelligence from the ground up. A new class of dynamical systems stays at the core of this disruptive innovation, driven by two key enablers: control-oriented descriptions of large-area interactions and contact-aware shape parametrizations. With this mathematical framework, I will define entirely new perception and control challenges - estimation and regulation of shape, pressure, and contact areas - to which I will provide provably reliable closed-form solutions grounded in control theory. With my fundamental contributions, I have already reshaped the understanding and application of soft robots' motor intelligence. With my experience, I will steer RIPLEY to transform soft machines again by bringing interaction-centric robots to life, unlocking applications from inspection to agriculture to healthcare.

Keywords: soft robotics,control of soft robots,control of mechanical systems
Cherenkov light for total-body Positron Emission Tomography (CherPET)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Proof of concept grants
Action type: ERC actions
Countries involved: Slovenia
Call: ERC PROOF OF CONCEPT GRANTS2 (ERC-2022-POC2, 2022)
Start date: 2023-10-01
End date: 2025-03-31
Duration (months): 18.0
Total project cost (EUR): 150000.0
EU funding (EUR): 150000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The paradigm shift in medicine from the treatment of acute or advanced disease to very early diagnosis and even prevention in cancer, as well as in personalized treatment, puts more stringent requirements on positron-emission (PET) imaging both in terms of sensitivity as well as specificity. Novel long axial PET scanners with an axial field of view that can be greater than 1m offer a very attractive solution to many of these challenges, in particular if they are combined with the Time-of-flight (TOF) PET technology. The time-of-flight resolution of PET scanners is limited by the timing spread due to delayed scintillation emission. By using prompt Cherenkov photons instead, the coincidence timing resolution can be improved. We propose to prove the feasibility of the above idea by combining a set of our break-through innovation steps, latest advances in photon detection with large area fast photon detectors and in the low-noise fast timing electronics. The PET detector that we would develop in the proposed project would allow for a construction of a PET scanner at a lower cost, better performance and ease of handling, if compared with the state-of-the-art clinical devices. If successful, our technology will represent a major leap in the use of PET for cancer diagnosis, staging, restaging, prodromal detection of neurodegenerative and cardiac diseases as well as treatment guidance and monitoring.