Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Single jUNction perovsKIte solar cell powereD hydrogen production (SUNKID)

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: Information Science and Engineering
Countries involved: Spain
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2025-08-01
End date: 2027-07-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 209914.56
EU funding (EUR): 209914.56
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Growing technological and societal advances have accelerated the energy requirements. To meet energy demands, reliance on fossil fuels has led to catastrophic changes in the environment and global climate due to carbon emissions. Renewable energy sources offer excellent ways to meet energy demands in addition to reducing carbon emissions. Although solar energy is most abundant on Earth, its variability across locations and times makes it unreliable for consistent energy supply. Thus, efficient energy storage technologies are also essential for a sustainable future. Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have emerged as a highly efficient technology for converting solar energy into electricity owing to their remarkable properties, while hydrogen (H2) is gaining recognition as the ultimate source of green fuel. A photovoltaic-electrochemical (PV-EC) arrangement offers an excellent solution for sustainable solar energy conversion and storage. However, previously reported PV-EC systems employ two or more PV devices or solar cells connected in series to afford enough voltage (1.7 V) for H2 production. This proposal aims to ingeniously design a compact PV-EC device, using a single-junction PSC providing sufficient voltage and employing this to an EC cell for H2 production. The main objectives are: 1) To fabricate PSC using carefully selected perovskite materials with optimally wide bandgap and apply passivation strategies to achieve a high voltage of >1.5 V at maximum power point (MPP). 2) To further enhance the voltage up to a remarkable value of ~1.7 V at MPP, specifically designed photonic nanostructures will be incorporated into the PSCs for reducing the Boltzmann loss (mismatch in incident and emitted lights). 3) To assemble a PV-EC compact device utilizing the developed PSC for H2 production through water splitting. This research will motivate the incorporation of nanophotonic structures in other PV technologies and facilitate high voltages for energy storage applications.

Keywords: solar energy conversion,perovskite solar cells,nanophotonics,water splitting,hydrogen production,storable chemical energy,photoelectrochemical cells
Simulating Other Minds in Autism (MINDSIM)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Panel description: Cognitive science, psychology, linguistics
Countries involved: Sweden
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2025-STG, 2025)
Start date: 2027-01-01
End date: 2031-12-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1500000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The mere presence of another person automatically triggers powerful processes of belief computation in our brains. This spontaneous and well-established Theory of Mind (ToM) ability is considered vital for efficient social interactions. Yet, we still know little about the mechanisms allowing the brain to automatically, and without apparent mental effort, keep track of who is believing what. I argue that the role of modeling others’ attention is an overlooked and a key factor in this process. I propose the novel hypothesis that the brain makes use of an implicit model of others’ attention, recently characterized by me, featuring the simplified construct of implied motion ‘beams’ linking agents to attended objects, to support automatic belief computations. In Aim 1, supported by preliminary behavioral results, I will determine whether people perceive others’ beliefs as an implied motion between agents and belief targets, and whether this mechanism plays a functional role in spontaneous ToM. Aim 2 will apply multimodal neuroimaging and neurostimulation to define the underlying neural representations. Previous work suggests that spontaneous ToM and visual motion processing is impaired in autism. Aim 3 will examine the hypothesis that failure to engage visual motion systems when perceiving others’ beliefs explains the reduced spontaneous ToM in autism. Critically, the serotonin releasing agent MDMA is suggested to enhance both visual-motion and ToM processing. In Aim 4, I will therefore employ a double-blind, active-placebo-controlled trial to test the hypothesis that MDMA can improve spontaneous ToM in autism by upregulating this motion-based mechanism. Using an innovative behavioral intervention, I will utilize MDMA’s known effects to promote motion-encoding of others’ beliefs. My results will reveal fundamental principles of social cognition and may provide a long sought-after mechanism-focused intervention to facilitate social cognition in autism.

Keywords: social cognition,theory of mind,attention,autism,fmri,psychopharmacology,mdma,intracranial eeg,electrical brain stimulation
UNCAN-CONNECT: Decentralized Collaborative Network for Advancing Cancer Research and Innovation (UNCAN-Connect)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Mission
Theme: Cancer
Destination: Cancer
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Estonia,Germany,Cyprus,France,Italy,Türkiye,Spain,Romania,Portugal,Denmark,Ukraine,Finland,Austria,Croatia,Greece,Slovenia,Belgium,Netherlands,Poland,Czechia,Switzerland
Call: Use cases for the UNCAN.eu research data platform (HORIZON-MISS-2024-CANCER-01, 2024)
Start date: 2025-09-01
End date: 2030-08-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 29935702.5
EU funding (EUR): 29935701.5
Participants: 54
Project status: SIGNED

Europe still sees a quarter of the world's cancer cases each year, making cancer the second leading cause of death and illness in the region after cardiovascular diseases. Unless we take decisive action, lives lost to cancer in the EU are set to increase by more than 24% by 2035, making it the leading cause of death in the EU. Cross-border collaboration can address this challenge by combining data from various modalities and sources, extracting meaningful insights to deepen our understanding of cancer. However, ethical, legal, and national regulations, along with data access processes, including differing interpretations of the EU GDPR create significant hurdles. Technical interoperability issues across European cancer RIs, and patients' and citizens' rights to control who uses their personal information and for what purposes further complicate data sharing. The project will provide European researchers, SMEs, and innovators with a decentralized collaborative network, “UNCAN-CONNECT,” for cancer research. It consists of both technical components, a governance, compliance, and operational framework based on the UNCAN blueprint, with the goal of operationalizing it. The objective is to facilitate access to cancer data, promote open science, and revolutionize cancer research and treatment by co-creating an open-source federation of federations platform. It will be developed using specific use cases focused on six major cancer types: Paediatric, Lymphoid malignancies, Pancreatic cancer, Ovarian, Lung, and Prostate cancers and active collaboration with a diverse range of stakeholders, including researchers, SMEs, industrial end users, and citizens. It will build on existing European RIs such as BBMRI as well as initiatives like EOSC4CANCER, CanSERV, EUCAIM, to enable seamless storage, access, sharing, and processing of data across Member States and associated countries. This approach will foster interoperability and collaboration, accelerating progress in cancer research. This action is part of the Cancer Mission clusters of projects 'Understanding' established in 2022.

Keywords: cancer mission,uncan,cancer research,decentralised collaborative network,innovation
Neural correlates of narrative discourse in mild cognitive impairment (NEUROCOG)

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: Social Sciences and Humanities
Countries involved: Italy,United States
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2023 (HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01, 2023)
Start date: 2025-09-01
End date: 2028-08-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 265099.2
EU funding (EUR): 265099.2
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

The goal of the proposal is to identify the association of different narrative perseverations features in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) subtypes with their neural oscillatory profiles. MCI patients show moderately impaired performance on neuropsychological tests but relatively intact global cognition and daily functioning. Validated as different from both normal ageing and dementia, MCI is a risk factor for the development of dementia. The evolving profile to dementia of MCI subtypes is a largely debated issue. MCI patients typically show narrative perseverations in conversations, i.e. reiterations of their own previous narrations. According to literature, perseverations have been studied as test responses in the context of dementia but have not been systematically explored as speech of MCI patients. Recent studies suggest that different oscillatory responses can be observed in different MCI subtypes. However, no effort has been attempted so far to relate such oscillation profiles to linguistic patterns in the speech production of MCI patients. The present action is, therefore, to investigate whether different narrative perseveration subtypes can be associated with distinct neural patterns (oscillatory profiles).

Keywords: formulaic language auto echolalia narrative discourse hypothesis driven linguistic methods
Island ecosystem ecology from deep prehistory to the Anthropocene (ISLANDLAB)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: The Study of the Human Past
Panel description: Archaeology and history
Countries involved: Germany,Malta
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): 1498883.0
EU funding (EUR): 1498883.0
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

Humans are fragmenting ecosystems into habitat 'islands', causing an unprecedented global collapse of large mammal populations just as science is discovering their essential ecological roles. The impact of these losses is such that our understanding of the contemporary biosphere is clearly shaped by a world artificially depleted of terrestrial giants. However, the causes of megafaunal extinctions over a much deeper, >50,000-year timeframe remain strongly contested. How did specific anthropogenic and/or climate factors interact to transform and collapse megafaunal ecosystems and what implications did this have for human societies at different points in time? The feedbacks and ecological legacies of these older extinctions have important lessons for the current biodiversity crisis, yet the dearth of good quality fossil and contextual data from many regions, settings and species has prevented robust appraisal. ISLANDLAB will explore these questions using the Maltese Islands as a frame of reference for the effects of anthropogenic ecosystem fragmentation. Pilot work has already uncovered an unprecedented deep-time record of pristine natural systems successively interrupted by waves of humans. Direct interaction between humans and the endemic megafauna begins with a likely Neanderthal presence and ends with the first monumental civilizations, with exponential losses and subsequent faunal reintroductions lasting until the mid-Holocene. By building high-resolution ecological, climatic, and archaeological characterisations of Malta before and after human arrival and subsequent alteration of biotas, ISLANDLAB will therefore document long-term legacies and feedbacks between ecological changes, societal responses, and ecosystem resilience. More broadly, the results will shed light on extinction processes in current anthropogenic landscapes, elucidating the ecological and human dimensions of restoration pathways from an island paradigm at a pivot between Europe and Africa.

Keywords: human evolution,anthropocene,megafauna
Twinning Laboratory for an Innovative, Global Hub To Explore the Deep (TWILIGHTED)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Widening Participation and Strengthening the European Research Area
Programme: Widening participation and spreading excellence
Theme: Improved access to Excellence
Destination: Improved access to Excellence
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Panel: Environment and Geosciences
Countries involved: Portugal,Germany,Norway
Call: Twinning Bottom-Up (HORIZON-WIDERA-2023-ACCESS-02, 2023)
Start date: 2024-10-01
End date: 2027-09-30
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1498558.78
EU funding (EUR): 1498558.78
Participants: 3
Project status: SIGNED

TWILIGHTED is a groundbreaking Horizon Europe Twinning project that seeks to revolutionize deep-sea research, development and innovation (RD&I) in Portugal, ultimately benefiting all of Europe. Collaborating closely with the esteemed European institutions of GEOMAR (Germany) and NTNU (Norway), TWILIGHTED aims to transform ARDITI (Madeira, Portugal) into a global hub for deep-sea RD&I. Focusing on the challenging Mesophotic Zone (40-200m) and the enigmatic Twilight Zone (200-1,000m), and capitalizing on Madeira's unique proximity to deep waters, TWILIGHTED will help accelerate our global understanding of the ocean and its essential role in sustaining life on earth. TWILIGHTED’s key objectives are to: (1) Collaborate across research institutes in Europe, (2) Elevate the research profile of Portugal and especially the European Outermost Region of Madeira, (3) Innovate low-cost alternatives to state-of-the-art deep-sea research technologies, (4) Democratize deep-sea research, (5) Globalize deep-sea RD&I and (6) Share ocean science across stakeholders. To achieve its objectives, TWILIGHTED will adopt state-of-the-art approaches to training and networking. Development activities include staff exchanges, expert visits, training schools, joint research missions, the International Twilighted Conference and novel cross-sector workshops stimulating creativity in solving the ocean’s greatest challenges (the Impossible Things Workshops). Such capacity-building will not only catalyze deep-sea RD&I in Madeira, but ensure a lasting impact on the deep-sea scientific landscape, sustainable ocean policy and Madeira’s socioeconomic development. TWILIGHTED marks the start of a transformative journey for Portugal, redefining its role in understanding and protecting vital deep-sea ecosystems. TWILIGHTED will also facilitate greater diversity and collaboration in time-critical matters of ocean sustainability and leave a significant mark on the global pursuit for more democratic science.

Keywords: deep sea research low cost research tools impossible things workshops atlantic islands european outermost region democratization
Reconstructing Embodied Musical knowledge At the Keyboard (REM@KE)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Synergy grants
Action type: ERC actions
Countries involved: Italy,United Kingdom,Sweden
Call: ERC SYNERGY GRANTS (ERC-2024-SyG, 2024)
Start date: 2025-09-01
End date: 2031-08-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 8031361.0
EU funding (EUR): 8031361.0
Participants: 3
Project status: SIGNED

The fundamental objective of REM@KE is to reconstruct the sound and the function of lost musical instruments and to develop new theoretical, empirical, and practical tools to explore the embodied musical knowledge emerging from the relationships between these instruments and their performers. Among the great variety of objects of the past that inhabit museums, musical instruments are in a category of their own: if kept silent, music cannot be; if played, their materiality is endangered. These instruments are at risk of being silenced forever, as their conservation becomes the priority. To ensure access for future generations, a radical intervention is needed, to comprehensively study how they sounded and played when they were new, as well as their design principles and construction processes, so that they may be reconstructed, played, and heard both materially and virtually. To investigate the sound of these objects, we have developed a new research framework ‘Cognitive and Digital Organology’ (CaDO) that builds new bridges between organology, performance practice research, and cognitive sciences. CaDO will study the people involved with music, the instruments producing the sounds (interlocked into a system that evolves over time), in a space that is social, material, and digital. Embodied cognitive science will be used to examine how resources from the bodies of builders, players, educators, and listeners determine their musical experiences, fostering new relationships that are formed and transformed in acts of musicking. Thus, CaDO can inspire richer understandings of the experiences of those who engage with historical musical instruments and their replicas. By reinterrogating the relationship between instrument, gesture, and music REM@KE aims to reclaim the sound of historical instruments, improve our understandings of how we engage with them, and guarantee a better future for them.

Keywords: organology keyboard organ clavichord harpsichord pianoforte cognition restoration conservation virtual reality mixed reality
Precarious Labour in Asia: Exploring Challenges and Solution to Labour Insecurity through Case-Study-Based Evidence from 8 Asian Countries (PRELAB)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Staff Exchanges
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Economic Sciences
Countries involved: Latvia,Ireland,Moldova, Republic of,Romania,Albania,Sri Lanka,Thailand,Viet Nam,Uzbekistan,Kyrgyzstan,Kazakhstan,Lao People's Democratic Republic,Indonesia,Croatia,Belgium,Germany
Call: MSCA Staff Exchanges 2022 (HORIZON-MSCA-2022-SE-01, 2022)
Start date: 2024-03-01
End date: 2028-02-29
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1656000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1656000.0
Participants: 20
Project status: SIGNED

A recent ILO report estimates that two billion workers are active in the informal economy. The relevance of the phenomenon is even higher if the secondary effects of informal employment are considered and is likely to get worse, given that climate change has come to increasingly affect those living in conditions of vulnerability, pushing more people into the informal sector. Although informal economic activity is widely present in Europe and North America, constituting around 20% of the national GDP, developing and emerging economies suffer disproportionately from this phenomenon. For example, the ILO estimates that Africa, Asia and Latin America host 93% of the world’s informal employment and have been on the rise due to the Covid-19 crisis. Altogether, the World Bank and ILO estimate that almost a billion people entered precarious work because of the pandemic, with women and young people being the most affected categories. PRELAB network includes academic and development organisations, all with a major focus on informality and development, to: 1) Train researchers in methodologies to measure informality in a global perspective; 2) Conceptualise ways to apply qualitative and quantitative methodologies that were successfully used Eastern Europe and Central Asia to our target countries in the Asia Pacific region; 3) Produce a consistent narrative on how to measure and tackle informality in emerging economies; and 4) Engage with policymakers and business actors, in addition to the scientific community, to identify ways to apply these approaches into development practice worldwide.

Keywords: asia,precarious employment,development,central asia,southeast asia
Neural basis of zebrafish collective decision-making (CollectiveDecisions)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Panel description: Nervous system development, homeostasis and ageing , nervous system  function and dysfunction , systems neuroscience  and modelling , biological basis of cognitive processes and of behaviour, neurological and mental disorders – In humans and all other organisms
Countries involved: Germany
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2022-STG, 2022)
Start date: 2023-08-01
End date: 2028-07-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1498787.0
EU funding (EUR): 1498787.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

It is challenging for isolated animals to reliably extract and integrate behaviorally relevant information from the natural environment. Due to the limited sensory capacity of individuals, many animal species therefore share and evaluate cues collectively, allowing them to solve complex decision-making tasks as a group. The behavioral algorithms and neural mechanisms that give rise to these cognitive abilities remain poorly understood. In many fish species, these behaviors are largely vision-based, providing the opportunity to decipher the underlying general computational principles under well-controlled experimental conditions in the lab. At the same time, it is becoming possible to employ powerful neuroscientific techniques, enabling new detailed analyses of the neural circuitry that orchestrates behavior. I propose to establish the juvenile zebrafish as a model system that is optimally suited for the study of collective decision-making. At this intermediate developmental stage, zebrafish offer an excellent compromise between cognitive ability and experimental accessibility. They can temporally and spatially integrate information, they start to socially interact, and one can characterize and manipulate brain activity in intact behaving animals. Using closed-loop virtual reality experiments, I will initially dissect the algorithmic rules by which juvenile zebrafish make decisions when swimming in heterogeneously biased groups. I will then characterize brain activity related to this behavior, in freely swimming fish, and in restrained preparations. Finally, to causally link neural circuit function and group decision-making performance, I will carry out targeted laser ablation and optogenetic activation experiments. Thus, my proposed research in juvenile zebrafish will, for the first time, provide key insights into the behavioral algorithms and neural mechanisms of how individual animals and animal collectives acquire sensory information and make complex decisions.

Keywords: decision making collective behavior behavioral modeling virtual reality zebrafish two photon microscopy