Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Electricity generated from heat with nonlinear pyroelectric materials (ELEC_FROM_HEAT)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced 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: Luxembourg
Call: ERC ADVANCED GRANTS (ERC-2023-ADG, 2023)
Start date: 2024-10-01
End date: 2029-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2359064.0
EU funding (EUR): 2359064.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Electric energy stands for 20% of the total energy consumed in the world, and this share is expected to reach 40% by 2050 as an outcome of the need to decrease our dependence on non-renewable energies. Beyond sunlight and wind, heat is another formidable and poorly exploited source of electrical energy. Indeed, currently 72 % of the energy produced ends up in waste heat - and it has been predicted that up to 13 000 TWh could be recovered each year, which stands for Europe’s yearly total energy needs! In this context, my team recently showed that 40 grams of nonlinear pyroelectric ceramics can generate more than 10 Joules of electric energy from waste heat in one single thermodynamic cycle of 100 degrees. This is one order of magnitude larger than the closest state-of-the-art. We also demonstrated that these materials exhibit an energy efficiency of 40 % with respect to Carnot’s efficiency – which is beyond what photovoltaics and thermoelectrics can provide. Therefore, the scientific question of this project is the following: “Is it possible to generate Watts efficiently with this technology - and not only Joules?” Hence, the objective of this project is to show that energy harvesters made of nonlinear pyroelectric materials can generate 100 W of electric power from heat with 50 % energy efficiency. To do so, I will (1) design and fabricate environmentally friendly nonlinear pyroelectric harvesting modules, (2) analyse the fundamental role played by specific phase transitions on the heat-to-electricity thermodynamic conversion in such materials, (3) elaborate a power generator based on these harvesting modules with enhanced heat exchange capabilities able to generate 100 W of electricity from heat, and (4) prepare another specific heat-to-electricity generator showing that conversion efficiency can reach 50 %. This project will provide a compact, efficient, and low-cost technology to transform waste heat into a massive new source of electric energy.

Keywords: energy harvesting waste heat pyroelectric materials ferroelectric materials ceramics electroactive polymers electricity generation energy efficiency
Silicon-Photonics Hot-Electron Light Sources (SPOTLIGHT)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Condensed Matter Physics
Panel description: Structure, electronic properties, fluids, nanosciences, biological physics
Countries involved: Denmark
Call: ERC CONSOLIDATOR GRANTS (ERC-2021-COG, 2021)
Start date: 2022-09-01
End date: 2027-08-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1962253.0
EU funding (EUR): 1962253.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The aim of the SPOTLIGHT project is to design, build, measure, and explore a novel class of light sources based on hot-electron emission in silicon bowtie structures. We will pioneer hitherto unexplored light sources that use strongly enhanced light-matter interaction to dramatically increase the radiative decay rate of hot electrons, i.e., electrons injected in high-energy bands. These high-energy bands do not play a role in light sources today because electrons in solids couple so strongly to phonons that they decay rapidly by phonon emission before any appreciable light emission can occur. As a result, even if electrons are injected at energies high up in the conduction bands, they decay non-radiatively to the conduction band edge on a picosecond timescale. This implies that essentially all electronics and photonics today rely on physical processes occurring close to the band gap and this holds for transistors, resistors, lasers, light-emitting diodes, single-photon sources, and much more. My idea builds on a recent breakthrough in my group where we demonstrated a novel type of nanocavity, capable of confining light to optical mode volumes so small that they were considered fundamentally impossible just a few years ago. These unique concepts enable speeding up the radiative processes by orders of magnitude, turning hot electrons in any semiconductor into a bright light source whose wavelength will be determined by the cavity, not the band gap. Our material of choice will be silicon, not only because it is the most important material in micro- and nanoelectronics for which an integrated light source is a long-sought goal, but also because silicon offers the most advanced nanotechnology. This will be crucial for our exploration of this uncharted frontier of semiconductor devices with unprecedented dimensions and unprecedented light-matter interaction strengths where new insights may have profound impact on nanotechnology, photonics, and beyond.

Keywords: photonic nanocavities,photonic nanophysics,nanoscale light sources,light matter interaction
GREENER URBAN TRAVEL ENVIRONMENTS FOR EVERYONE: From measured wellbeing impacts to Big Data analytics (GREENTRAVEL)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Human Mobility, Environment, and Space
Panel description: Human geography, demography, health, susta inability science, territorial planning, spatial analysis
Countries involved: Finland
Call: ERC CONSOLIDATOR GRANTS (ERC-2021-COG, 2021)
Start date: 2023-01-01
End date: 2027-12-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1981735.0
EU funding (EUR): 1981735.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Greenery is an integral part of healthy and liveable urban environments. Availability of greenery is a question of environmental justice and equity. The benefits of greenery have been clearly shown in the residential context, but exposure to greenery in everyday urban travel environments has been studied much less, if at all. The project will produce a novel understanding of the quality, availability and wellbeing impacts of green urban travel environments. Furthermore, it will produce knowledge on how equitably green exposure during travel and related wellbeing impacts are available to urban populations. It provides approaches and analysis on where to add greenery to advance equity. The project draws on the recent developments in urban informatics: It employs cutting edge technologies from immersive Virtual Reality to Big Data mining, but also critically evaluates it. Controlled VR experimentations and carry-on sensors will be used to reveal if and why green travel environments matter for people and what greenery features are relevant, also considering seasonal variations. The understanding will be backed up with more traditional surveys. Computer vision on street-view images and 3D models will be used to map relevant greenery features, from the human perspective and considering seasonalities. Mobile Big Data will be leveraged to study the mobility flows of the urban population and to reveal the equity of green exposure during these everyday trips, also considering different transportation modes. Finally, advanced spatial prioritization and green routing tools will identify the future potential for greener travel environments for everyone. When successful, the project will produce transformational knowledge on the importance, availability and equity of green urban travel environments. It will produce completely new open methods and transferable procedures for analysing green travel environments in Europe and beyond.

Keywords: urban greenery,vegetation,seasonality,street level mapping,human perspective,daily trips,commuting,travel behaviour,route choice,transport mode,travel environment quality,green exposure,stated wellbeing,measured wellbeing,spatial equity,social equity,environmental justice,citizen science,virtual reality,sensor technology,street view imagery,ai,computer vision,mobile phone data,big data analytics,urban informatics,geoinformatics,social ecological technological systems,sets
Quantum Information Processing with Interacting Parties (QInteract)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Computer Science and Informatics
Panel description: Informatics and information systems, computer science, scientific computing, intelligent systems
Countries involved: Denmark
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2022-STG, 2022)
Start date: 2023-01-01
End date: 2027-12-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1500000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

We are approaching an era where the capabilities of quantum hardware begin to meet the requirements of theoretical quantum protocols. Such times give new urgency to the Central Challenge of the theory of quantum information processing: For which tasks do quantum devices hold an advantage over their conventional counterparts? My proposal addresses this challenge in the context of information processing with interacting parties, which is the natural setting for problems in cryptography, communication, and distributed computing. We take a two-pronged approach with each prong addressing an essential facet of interactive information processing while sharing a common focus on efficiency. A desired impact is to kick-start a new pragmatic trend that focuses on efficiency in areas where the main goal so far has been an information-theoretic understanding of ultimate quantum capabilities. The first work package deals with the uniquely quantum resource of entanglement which is responsible for most quantum advantages in multi-party settings. We will propose new tools (e.g. entanglement-preserving reductions) that will allow us to systematically identify scenarios where the generally elusive quantum advantages can be detected and realized efficiently. We will also address major outstanding challenges like the Parallel Repetition question and finding a simple task capable of distinguishing two competing models of entanglement. The latter is our most ambitious goal which would provide an alternative proof for Connes' Embedding Problem and lay theory groundwork for an experiment capable of identifying the right mathematical description of reality. The second work package will leverage Schur-Weyl duality to devise efficient algorithms for symmetric problems with quantum input. We will put forth new error reduction algorithms for black-box devices (e.g. quantum majority vote) and propose highly efficient explicit quantum circuits for key subroutines like quantum Schur sampling.

Keywords: entanglement,nonlocal games,quantum schur transform,connes embedding problem
NUTRIBUDGET - Optimisation of nutrient budget in agriculture. (NutriBudget)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment
Theme: Bio-Environment
Destination: Clean Environment and zero pollution
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Belgium,Norway,Finland,France,Spain,Netherlands,Italy,Austria,Sweden,Switzerland
Call: Optimisation of nutrient budget in agriculture (HORIZON-CL6-2021-ZEROPOLLUTION-01, 2021)
Start date: 2022-09-01
End date: 2026-08-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 7115086.25
EU funding (EUR): 7004836.25
Participants: 17
Project status: SIGNED

In line with the Zero Pollution action plan and the Farm to Fork Strategy, Nutribudget will develop the prototype of a first-of-its-kind integrated nutrient management platform, called Nutriplatform, in various regions across Europe. The Nutriplatform will operate as a decision-support tool (DST) for farmers, advisors and regional authorities and before the end of the project this prototype (as a stand-alone or integrated in the existing EC promoted FaST tool for nutrient management) will be tested and used by at least 40.000 farmers across Europe. Firstly, the development of the Nutriplatform will be based on the algorithms of two advanced newly developed holistic Nutrimodels that quantify the impact of agronomic mitigation measures to optimize nutrient budget and flow across scales (from farm to Europe), across elements (C) and nutrients (N, P, K, S, Ca, Mg, Cu and Zn) and by looking at various agronomic and environmental targets. The measures will be derived from (I) existing knowledge, including input from relevant EU projects (e.g. the 4 on nutrient recycling from the call) and (II) new data from field experiments with innovative mitigation measures and combinations thereof that connect animal and crop production via agro-processing industries in 5 pilot regions (4 nutrient hotspot and 1 nutrient deficient area) in 4 different climate regions in Europe. Secondly, these measures will be linked to relevant monitoring indicators, called NutriKPIs, for agronomic performance in different farming systems, nutrient emissions and impact on biodiversity. All will be done in co-creation, according to a Nutri-actor approach, with a consortium of 17 partners from 10 countries that are all experts in their respective fields. Thereby, Nutribudget will contribute to systemically optimize nutrient management across different agricultural production systems and regions in the EU to reduce pollution due to the excessive use of nutrients and nutrient losses to the environment.

Keywords: nutrient models,mitigation measures,zero pollution,nutrient circularity,smart platform
Noise and/or ultrafine particulate matter induced cerebral and cardiovascular damage: novel insights from experimental and epidemiological brain-heart axis biomarkers and computational models (MARKOPOLO)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Health
Theme: Health
Destination: Living and working in a health promoting environment
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Germany,Italy,United States,Lithuania,Serbia,Luxembourg,Finland,Denmark,Switzerland,Cyprus
Call: The role of environmental pollution in non-communicable diseases: air, noise and light and hazardous waste pollution (HORIZON-HLTH-2024-ENVHLTH-02-two-stage, 2024)
Start date: 2025-01-01
End date: 2028-12-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 8263535.8
EU funding (EUR): 7999000.0
Participants: 16
Project status: SIGNED

Air pollution, especially particulate matter (PM), and traffic noise are major intertwined environmental risks. They contribute to the incidence of cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, mental, and metabolic, so-called non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Air pollution contributes to annual premature deaths (0.5 million) and traffic noise to loss of 1.6 million healthy life years in Europe. Critical issues are that noise and PM are underrepresented in clinical guidelines and that European legal exposure limits exceed WHO standards, also due to a limited understanding of knowledge transfer and success metrics. Significant knowledge gaps are related to additive effects of PM and noise, the role of ultrafine particle (UFP), adverse brain-heart axis signaling, and the consequences for vulnerable groups such as high-risk patients and the elderly. We address these critical health issues of traffic noise and air pollution (PM incl. UFP) by a unique translational approach using experimental and computational models in clinical, interventional, and epidemiological studies. A primary goal is to identify disease-relevant biomarkers and understand the molecular pathways of cerebral, pulmonary and cardiovascular NCDs, also by effective translation of animal findings to human health. Our “bench to life” approach on brain-heart axis is entirely driven by profound preclinical mechanistic knowledge and will use novel Multiomics methodology (e.g. redox/phospho-proteomics, “spatial” epigenetics) allowing analysis of key pathomechanisms, to be included in exposure-response models. This will improve risk assessment and allow evaluation of the effectiveness of mitigation strategies. We will also consider the societal circumstances and policies at the national level and their impact on different stakeholders. MARKOPOLO will advance our understanding of the complex interplay between noise, air pollution, and human well-being and provide clearer information and guidelines for various stakeholders.

Keywords: traffic noise ultrafine particles multi exposure conditions disease relevant pathomechanisms brain heart axis multiomics animal combined exposure models computational models diseasome exposome
Transcriptional footprints of cancer dependency shock as a computational tool for early anti-cancer drug discovery (DepSHOCK)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Integrative B iology : from Genes and Genomes to S ystems
Panel description: For all organis ms: Genetics, epigenetics, genomics  and other ‘omics studies , bioinformatics, systems biology , genetic diseases , gene editing, innovative methods and modelling,  ‘omics for personalised  medicine
Countries involved: Italy
Call: ERC CONSOLIDATOR GRANTS (ERC-2023-COG, 2023)
Start date: 2024-03-01
End date: 2029-02-28
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1999455.0
EU funding (EUR): 1999455.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The “oncogenic shock” model has been introduced to describe the interplay between pro-survival and pro-apoptotic signals that follow an oncogene's inactivation and lead to cancer cell death. In my recent work, I demonstrated that identifying novel cancer dependencies through systematic computational analyses of CRISPR functional genetic screens and multi-omic data is an excellent means to discover and prioritise new anti-cancer therapeutic targets. Here, I extend the oncogenic shock concept to any cancer dependency gene. I call “cancer dependency shock” (DepSHOCK) the signal dynamics’ interplay that follows the ablation of any gene essential for cancer cell survival, i.e., cancer dependency gene. Any DepSHOCK triggers the sudden inactivation of pro-survival pathways and activates death- inducing signals, with both events impacting down-streaming transcription factors, leaving a measurable gene expression footprint. My hypothesis is that each DepSHOCK footprint can be deconvoluted to infer transcriptional markers of signals that emanate from a dependency gene and drive cancer cell survival through the constitutive activity of specific biological pathways. Here I propose to investigate this hypothesis across tissues, canonical oncogenic addictions, and novel candidate cancer therapeutic targets. To this aim, I plan to establish an experimental/computational platform for the generation and the analysis of unprecedented transcriptional datasets obtained at single-cell resolution upon genetic perturbation of a rationally selected panel of cancer cell lines and therapeutically relevant dependency genes. My overarching goal will be to study the information content of the DepSHOCK footprints and their potential use as computational tools in early anti-cancer drug discovery through new statistical and machine-learning methods delivering mechanistically grounded therapeutic markers and hints for the design of combinatorial therapies.

Keywords: cancer dependencies,single cell crispr,target discovery,machine learning,therapeutic markers,predictive models,early drug discovery
Discreet Organic Superluminophores (DISCOS)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Panel description: New materials and new synthetic approaches, structure -properties relations, solid state chemistry, molecular architecture, organic chemistry
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2025-STG, 2025)
Start date: 2026-01-01
End date: 2030-12-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1499768.0
EU funding (EUR): 1499768.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Considering that all life on Earth ultimately relies on the interaction of carbon-based organic matter with light through photosynthesis, it is unsurprising that organic molecules which absorb and emit light broadly overarch scientific disciplines, with great implications in modern technologies related to sensing, bioscience, electronics and energy. Organic “superluminophores” (SLs) (J-aggregates) afford a unique synergy of properties, with fundamental advantages over traditional dyes – they absorb light more strongly and emit light more quickly and efficiently. Their sharp absorption and emission spectra also endow high colour purity and are desirable for selective and efficient excitation/ energy transfer in complex systems. SLs are hence very promising, both for facilitating new technologies, and for solving persistent issues faced by classical organics. However, current materials are critically limited by a need for supramolecular self-assembly. SL ensembles are formed, driven by interactions BETWEEN multiple molecules. Self-assembly is highly sensitive to changes in molecular structure, and dependent on both concentration and the local environment. This restricts predictable and reproducible processing and excludes SLs from applications where a low concentration/ discreet species is required. Here we aim to solve this longstanding limitation and propel SLs to the forefront. Firstly, systematic structural chemistry will afford robust design rules to construct Discreet Organic Superluminophores (DISCOS) that harness interactions WITHIN rigid molecules to enhance how they absorb and emit light, precluding self-assembly. Taking advantage of this fundamental advance, the DISCOS will next be broadly colour tuned to develop bespoke materials aimed at solving two of the most persistent applied problems facing luminescent organics – the instability of blue organic light emitting diodes, and the low luminescence efficiency of near-infrared dyes.

Keywords: organic materials,conjugated organic materials,organic semiconductors,optoelectronics,organic fluorescence,organic phosphorescence,organic luminescence,organic light emitting diodes oleds,organic photovoltaics opv