Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Quantum Metrology with Trapped Ions (IONOLOGY)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Fundamental Constituents of Matter
Countries involved: Israel
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-01-01
End date: 2018-12-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1999882.0
EU funding (EUR): 1999882.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

We propose a quantum algorithmic approach to metrology and its implementation using trapped-ion qubits. Active decoherence suppression methods such as decoherence-free subspaces, Quantum error-correction codes and dynamic decoupling will be used to reduce the effect of noise while amplifying a measured signal, thus improving on the measurement signal-to-noise ratio. An ion trap architecture that best suits this approach will be designed and realized. Several metrology protocols will be demonstrated. Finally, we propose to apply these methods in actual precision measurements, including the detection of magnetic interaction between ions at large distances, optical frequency metrology, the measurement of parity violation in atomic transitions, and the detection of correlations in an ultra-cold gas of neutral atoms. The implications of scaling-up to large numbers of probe-qubits will be investigated as well.

Keywords: trapped-ions,quantum metrology,quantum error correction
Sustainable Light - Driven Catalytic Chemistry (SUNCATCHEM)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Countries involved: Germany
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-02-01
End date: 2019-09-30
Duration (months): 68.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1997982.0
EU funding (EUR): 1997982.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Innovative fundamental research is key to facing challenges posed by our current societal, environmental and economic needs. Catalysis is a vital component of many potential solutions to contemporary global issues and breakthroughs in catalysis would inevitably bring about change. Among the most prominent challenges of the 21st century is the functionalization of abundant but unreactive C-H bonds as development of these transformations would enable the sustainable formation of new carbon-carbon or carbon-heteroatom bonds, needed for the construction of vitally important complex molecules. Even more challenging is the direct, enantioselective functionalization of unreactive C-H and C-C double bonds which would lead to valuable, optically active products which are highly desirable for the pharmaceutical, agrochemical and fine chemical industries. The general objective of this proposal is to redefine the synthetic methodology for obtaining highly valuable, optically active products, used in life science applications, by using novel strategies, involving three unprecedented concepts which employ visible light available from the sun. Successful validation of our three innovative, light-driven, catalysis concepts will have great impact on catalysis, organic synthesis and fundamental science in general. As a key enabling technology, we will also devise unprecedented reaction concepts which will allow fast and autonomous self-optimization without the need for any manual interaction, resulting in increased practicability and high acceptance from the scientific community. By both designing and matching synthetic methodology with innovative technology we aim to enhance the environmental credentials and improved economic feasibility of the resulting reactions and systems, leading to wide acceptance and implementation and, thus, make a significant contribution towards the paradigm shift to sustainable chemistry.
Novel radical chemistry for complex peptide synthesis and engineering (NORACHEM)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Countries involved: France
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-04-01
End date: 2020-03-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1984218.0
EU funding (EUR): 1984218.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Natural products are a constant source of inspiration in chemistry and have played a key role in the development of medicine. Recently, thanks to the progress in genomics and metagenomics, it has appeared that the biosynthetic potential of microorganisms and the complexity of the reactions catalyzed have been largely underestimated. Notably, enzymes using radical-based chemistry have been shown to be present in a very-large amount of biosynthetic pathways and to be widely distributed among all living organisms. The highly reactive radical species they generate give access to chemistries not accessible otherwise and allow them to catalyze unique and diverse reactions. Among them, the so-called "radical SAM enzymes" have attracted considerable attention in recent years. While, initially hypothesized to be a family with several hundreds of members, recent genomic analyses have revealed that there are several tens of thousands of radical SAM enzymes catalyzing more than sixty distinct biochemical processes. Very recently, an ever increasing number of radical SAM enzymes has been discovered in the biosynthetic pathways of natural compounds. In several cases, it has been shown that, instead of involving non-ribosomal or polyketide synthases, microorganisms use radical SAM enzymes to extensively modify ribosomally synthesized peptides producing highly complex bioactive molecules. In the present project, we propose to develop a multidisciplinary approach to investigate promising radical SAM enzymes catalyzing peptide modifications and elucidate their unique mechanisms which, in many cases, have no counterparts in biochemistry and synthetic chemistry. Based on the unique and highly conserved radical SAM domain and the mechanistic insights gained, we will develop novel radical SAM enzymes as catalysts for the synthesis of new chemicals with original structures and properties using a synthetic biology approach.

Keywords: radical chemistry,enzyme,enzymatic mechanism,biosynthesis,peptides,antibiotics,synthetic biology
Oxygen Sensing with Multimodality Imaging Probes (O2SENSE)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-09-01
End date: 2020-02-29
Duration (months): 66.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1886876.0
EU funding (EUR): 1886876.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

This programme will employ physical sciences and biomedicine techniques to develop a revolutionary approach to early cancer diagnosis and post-treatment monitoring aiming to address shortcomings in our current technology in oxygen sensing and imaging of hypoxic prostate tumours. This proposal represents a gearing process towards the biomedical implementation of metal complexes and functionalised nanoparticles as novel synthetic platform systems for personalised diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as cancer and which can also be extended to neurodegenerative disorders. The work programme is a meeting point for interdisciplinary science that goes well beyond state of the art. New chemical sensing devices will outstrip and supersede existing biopsy and imaging techniques used in diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as cancers. The key advances of this programme will be: (a) ‘smart’ all-in-one multimodal imaging probes, whose sensitivities to levels of oxygen in cells (pO2) will be tunable to respond to various levels of hypoxia in tumors as desired. Our ultra-sensitive probes will be effective at low O2 concentrations and respond to reduced levels of hypoxia and under anoxia. This will surpass the mainstay in cancer diagnosis and therapy and provide increased selectivity for a wider range of tumours. (b) new probes suitable for interlocked Positron Emission Tomography (PET), Single Photon Emission Tomography (SPECT), and optical imaging methodologies Simultaneous in vitro and in vivo diagnostic information from radioimaging techniques (PET, SPECT) and optical imaging will provide in depth understanding of biological processes and lead to personalised medicine. (c) new imaging tools for the first time will monitor the cellular biolocalisation of these probes by multiphoton optical imaging in nearIR regimes. These will drive the development of time-gated microscopy and multi-photon imaging with sensitivity for various levels of tumour hypoxia.

Keywords: molecular imaging,pet,optical,biosensing,drug delivery,prostate cancer hypoxia,fluorescence lifetime imaging,radiochemistry,inorganic and supramolecular chemistry,graphene,carbon nanocarbon
Geometry, Groups and Model Theory. (GETEMO)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Mathematics
Countries involved: France
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-06-01
End date: 2019-05-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1284000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1284000.0
Participants: 3
Project status: CLOSED

Our proposed research lies at the interface of Geometry, Group Theory, Number Theory and Combinatorics. In recent years, striking results were obtained in those disciplines with the help of a surprise newcomer at the border between mathematics and logic: Model Theory. Bringing its unique point of view and its powerful formalism, Model Theory made a resounding entry into several different fields of mathematics. Here shedding new light on a classical phenomenon, there solving a long-standing open problem via a completely new method. Recent examples of concrete mathematical problems where Model Theory interacted in a fruitful manner abound: the local version of Hilbert's 5th problem by Goldbring and van den Dries, Szemeredi's theorems in combinatorics and graph theory, the André-Oort conjecture in diophantine geometry (Pila, Wilkie, Zannier), etc. In this vein, and building on Hrushovski's model-theoretic work, Green, Tao and myself recently settled a conjecture of Lindenstrauss pertaining to the structure of approximate groups. Our plan in this project is to put these methods into further use, to collaborate with model theorists, and to start looking through this prism at a small collection of familiar problems coming from combinatorics, group theory, analysis and spectral geometry of metric spaces, or from arithmetic geometry. Among them: extend our study of approximate groups to the general setting of locally compact groups, obtain uniform estimates on the spectrum of Cayley graphs of large finite groups, prove an analogue for character varieties of the Pink-Zilber conjectures in relation with rigidity theory for discrete subgroups of Lie groups, and clarify the links between uniform spectral gaps and height lower bounds in diophantine geometry with a view towards Lehmer's conjecture.

Keywords: geometric group theory,discrete subgroups of lie groups,riemannian geometry,arithmetic combinatorics on groups,diophantine and arithmetic geometry,model theory.
C9orf72 repeat expansion in FTD/ALS - from mechanisms to therapeutic approaches (DPR-MODELS)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Neurosciences and Neural Disorders
Countries involved: Germany
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-05-01
End date: 2019-04-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1991000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1991000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are fatal neurodegenerative diseases with overlapping genetics and pathology. The most common known cause is expansion of a GGGGCC repeat in the first intron of the gene C9orf72. I discovered that the repeat region is translated in all three reading frames into aggregating dipeptide-repeat (DPR) proteins despite its intronic localization and lack of an ATG start codon. DPR aggregates outnumber the previously identified TDP-43 inclusions in the hippocampus, cortex and cerebellum. Some patients exclusively show DPR pathology, strongly suggesting DPR production is a key pathomechanism in C9orf72 mutation carriers. However, we know next to nothing about the mechanisms of translation, toxicity, aggregation and clearance of DPR proteins. With this grant I will characterize this unusual pathomechanism in detail. First, I will generate monoclonal antibodies for a comprehensive analysis of all DPR species to determine the best pathological correlate of disease progression. Insights from patients will drive mechanistic studies and will help to identify therapeutic targets within the DPR cascade. Second, I will develop cell culture models to identify the molecular pathways that determine the expression, toxicity and aggregation of DPR proteins. These models will be used to identify drugs that block all steps of the DPR cascade in pilot screens. Third, I will create transgenic mouse models expressing DPR proteins to rigorously validate the DPR hypothesis by comparing pathology and clinical symptoms of transgenic mice and human C9orf72 patients. Finally, these mouse models will be used to test promising compounds identified in cellular models in prevention and treatment trials. Moreover, I will analyse whether passive immunization with the newly developed monoclonal antibodies allows clearance of DPR proteins from the brain as it has been shown for other intracellular aggregating proteins such as a-synuclein.

Keywords: frontotemporal dementia,amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,translation mechanisms,protein aggregation,mouse models
Social Network Implementation of Health Campaigns Among Youth (MYMOVEZ)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Institutions, Values, Beliefs and behaviour
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-09-01
End date: 2019-08-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1999594.0
EU funding (EUR): 1999594.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Western societies devote substantial resources to media health campaigns, especially targeting young people. Unfortunately, health campaigns often have disappointing impact. There is a compelling need for insight into campaign implementation in social life. Especially among youth, the social environment plays a crucial role in message processing. Therefore, health campaigns can only be improved with a multidisciplinary approach that can predict youth’s behaviour within their social environment. The proposed programme aims to develop a method for effective campaign implementation via youth’s social networks. This method will (1) identify and target the most powerful influence agents in youth’s social networks, (2) tailor campaign messages to the most effective influence mechanisms, and (3) evaluate the effectiveness of social network implemented campaigns. The method will be based on the multidisciplinary Media X Social Influence (MXSI) model, integrating theories from communication, marketing, psychology, and sociology. Five research projects focus on youth’s weight-related behaviours. Drawing on a large-scale cross-sequential cohort study (N = 3,000, 9-15 y/o), the research (Phase I) tests and refines the MXSI model, identifying social influence agents and mechanisms, and (Phase II) tests the effectiveness of a social network-implemented health campaign in a group-randomised control trial, targeting the most powerful influence agents and mechanisms. The research projects use the Wearable Lab, a highly innovative smartphone-based research methodology. The project is theoretically and methodologically pioneering and will produce a unique and useful method for improving health campaigns. Feasibility and success are guaranteed by the applicant’s extensive experience and network. The applicant is one of the leading experts in the world on the role of marketing communication in youth socialisation and in translating these insights for health and prosocial purposes.

Keywords: media,children,adolescents,advertising,marketing,health,obesity,prevention,campaigns,social network,social media,social marketing,dynamic social network analysis
A Single Cell AnaLysis and Sorting Platform based on Lensfree digital imaging techniques applied to Rapid Detection of Cancer (SCALPEL)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Systems and Communication Engineering
Countries involved: Belgium
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-11-01
End date: 2021-01-31
Duration (months): 75.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1999840.0
EU funding (EUR): 1999840.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Metastasis is responsible for > 90% of cancer-related deaths. Billions of dollars have been spent trying to cure primary tumors but very little was spent in trying to detect or kill the highly aggressive tumor cells that cause disease spreading. One of the reasons is that single cell studies of rare cells in blood still present a large challenge. Single cell analysis remains tedious with many different instruments and protocols, typically taking a few days of hands-on work. This slows down research, but also hinders the translation to application in future clinical practice. In SCALPEL, we envisage a high-content, high-throughput cell imaging and sorting platform, more compact and easier to use than any existing single cell analyzer. The high content results from lensfree digital imaging of single cells on a high speed CMOS active optical pixel matrix to analyze the morphology of cells. The high throughput results from a highly parallelized fluidic matrix that steers cells at high speed over the CMOS imaging blocks. Lensfree cell sorters can be realized in a cheap and compact platform, as all optomechanical components (lenses, detectors, nozzles,...) are replaced by nanoelectronics, advanced imaging and signal processing technology. SCALPEL aims to perform a full feasibility study of this concept and will require to investigate the ultimate limits in: 1) maximizing image resolution and sensitivity to single cell morphological features obtained via lensfree holographic imaging; 2) maximizing cell manipulation speed in microfluidic systems via a high degree of parallelization; and 3) digital image signal processing with extremely low latency at reasonable power consumption. If this multidisciplinary complexity can be understood, we will have built the components for different versions of compact cytometers that can be used at hand of pathologist, surgeons, and nurses for improving the individualized follow-up and survival rate of cancer patients.

Keywords: single cell analysis,lensfree imaging,cancer detection
PAst Links in the Evolution of Ocean’s Global ENvIronment and Ecology (PALEOGENIE)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Earth System Science
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call:  (ERC-2013-CoG, 2013)
Start date: 2014-05-01
End date: 2019-04-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1930472.0
EU funding (EUR): 1930472.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Species do not live in isolation, but adapt and ultimately, evolve, in relationship with other species as well as with their chemical and physical environment. In the marine environment, this interaction is intimately two-way – the surface biogeochemical environment modulates the makeup of the pelagic ecosystem, yet at the same time, the ecosystem assemblage, by setting the strength of the biological pump and ultimately, in regulating the carbon and nutrient inventory of the ocean and atmospheric pCO2, influences the surface geochemical environment. Feedbacks, both negative and positive, must therefore exist between plankton ecology and global biogeochemical cycles. This has implications for understanding the geological record and particularly the response and recovery of marine ecosystems following major environmental perturbation, but also complicates making projections of future ocean changes. The proposed project – PALEOGENiE – will directly address these challenges via the development of a unique coupled model of past plankton ecology and global biogeochemical cycles. The geological record of planktic ecosystems – nannofossils – will be collated and analyzed across a spectrum of geological events for which evidence of major changes in climate and massive carbon release together with the response of planktic ecosystems are recorded: the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, the end Cretaceous, and Ocean Anoxic Event 2. Both model and data will then be brought together in a unique attempt to better understanding the micropaleontological record of how sensitive marine ecosystems are to global change as well as how they recover. If successful, PALEOGENiE may help constrain the potential for adaptation as well as rates of evolutionary change, and ultimately could lead to meaningful insights and guidance for the next generation of Earth system models we need to better constrain the future response of marine ecosystems to continued fossil fuel combustion.

Keywords: earth system model ecosystems extinctions global biogeochemical cycles micropaleontology evolution adaptation cretaceous petm