Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Circular Systemic Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems (WEFE) Nexus CCRI Demonstrator for Regions facing Severe Water Stress. (CisWEFE-NEX)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment
Theme: Bio-Environment
Destination: Other Bio-environnement destinations
Action type: Innovation actions
Countries involved: Spain,France,Germany,Italy,Portugal,Denmark,Greece,Netherlands,Switzerland
Call: Circular Cities and Regions Initiative (CCRI)’s circular systemic solutions (HORIZON-CL6-2023-CIRCBIO-02, 2023)
Start date: 2024-06-01
End date: 2029-05-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 11056170.98
EU funding (EUR): 9659285.15
Participants: 27
Project status: SIGNED

Contributing to the CCRI project portfolio, CisWEFE-NEX will demonstrate the implementation of a circular systemic WEFE Nexus, an innovative, fully integrated, & sustainable approach applying the principles of circular economy for closing loops in the key value chains of food, water & nutrients in severely water stressed regions: 1. Water: - A net positive freshwater balance to the water cycle (JRC 2021) will be achieved through combining olive mill wastewater reuse (as a co-product from biophenols extraction) with saltwater desalination at scale without using fossil fuels for use as drinking & irrigation water. - Waste streams from desalination (brine & bitterns) will be repurposed in nature-based solar saltworks as table & Epsom salt, made possible because of zero chemical use in the desalination process. 2. Energy: - Cutting-edge renewable energy technologies will be developed & demonstrated to achieve a net-zero direct fossil GHG emissions process. - Agri-photovoltaics (crops under PV panels) and biogas from advanced (ultrasonic cavitation assisted) anaerobic digestion fed from olive mill & other biowastes. 3. Food: - Innovative nature-based techniques will be demonstrated to enable truly sustainable, healthy, and fresh food & seaweed (containing bioactive compounds for pharma use) production at scale. - Saltwater integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (free of growth hormones, antibiotics, synthetic fertilisers, & preservatives). - Regenerative agriculture (organic permaculture reusing precious water & nutrients) and extractive reuse of biophenols from olive mill waste as bioactive products of very high nutri-pharmaceutical value. 4. Ecosystems: - Monitoring of traditional & emerging (micro)pollutants using cutting-edge analytics will prevent harmful impacts on the environment & food grown from it with predictive alerts & remedies through a mobile controlled cavitation unit providing (waste)water treatment services (advanced oxidation processes, disinfection).

Keywords: water stress,water scarcity,drought,emerging micropollutants,water reuse,desalination,brine,olive mill waste,agri voltaics,biophenols,polyphenols,cavitation,biogas,aquaculture,seaweed
3D integrated photonic nanostructures with Giant optical nonlinearity (3DnanoGiant)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Materials Engineering
Panel description: Advanced materials development: performance enhancement, modelling, large -scale preparation, modification, tailoring, optimisation, novel  and combined use of materials, etc.
Countries involved: Italy
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: 3
Project status: SIGNED

Photonics has a major impact on technological innovations and can revolutionize the field of computing and data processing due to its high bandwidth, speed, and low power consumption. This has already happened for data communication via fiber-optic connections, while light processing in embedded systems is still performed by electronics via power-hungry optical-electrical conversion. The future development of integrated photonics is then waiting for new integrable materials that can advance the functionality of photonic chips towards all-optical signal processing at very low light intensities. While linear operations and parallel matrix multiplication can be efficiently performed by light, nonlinear optical functions are notoriously difficult to implement because they require a suitable medium for efficient photon-photon interaction. Currently, there is a lack of materials with large third-order nonlinearity, high speed and easy processability and integration in 2D and 3D structures. 3DnanoGiant aims to develop new nonlinear photonic materials that can be integrated into heterogeneous functional platforms or chiplets. To this end, I will exploit the giant optical nonlinearity of liquid crystals (ten orders of magnitude larger than that of silicon), for new formulations and lithographic strategies by which the liquid crystals will be confined in a printable nano-porous polymer network. Their 3D nanopatterning will enable the production of multidimensional hybrid nonlinear photonic devices, from all-optical 2D logic gates and ultrafast nonlinear activation functions to self-oscillating 3D photonic crystals. In parallel, the propagation, interaction and polymerization of solitons in a 3D(+1) space will lay the foundation for a new unsupervised bottom-up 3D printing technology. The goals of 3DnanoGiant will redefine the state-of-the-art in integrated nonlinear photonics with practical and versatile heterogeneous chip for fast and energy-efficient optical processing.
Quantum lock-in amplifier phonon detectors (Q-LAMP)

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: Finland,Denmark
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2023 (HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01, 2023)
Start date: 2024-04-01
End date: 2026-03-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 199694.4
EU funding (EUR): 199694.4
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

The precise measurement of phononic properties of materials is crucial for the emerging physics and next-generation technologies. With the ever-growing study of phononic many-body physics, the need for precise phonon measurement has become increasingly important. Quantum lock-in measurement techniques offer a promising avenue for future phonon detection, boasting significant advantages such as ultra-high resolution, heightened sensitivity, and the capability for concurrent measurement of amplitude, frequency, and phase. In this project, I propose innovative quantum lock-in amplifier phonon detector (Q-LAMP) for phonon detection for the first time and plan to experimentally demonstrate their effectiveness in simultaneously measuring phonon phase, frequency, and amplitude. I plan to use Q-LAMP to measure topological localized states in phononic crystals and can also be employed for detecting weak microwaves. The quantum lock-in amplifier developed in this project will pushing both phononics physics and wireless communication to new stage. This interdisciplinary training scheme is designed to enhance Ruihuan's expertise in quantum optics, fortifying his skills and helping him establish a research career in Europe. It covers component design and implementation, theoretical analysis, mathematical modelling and applications. To assist Ruihuan in attaining professional maturity and broadening his exposure to academic and industrial collaborations, he will receive training on intellectual property management, funding and proposal writing, commercialization, supervision and teaching. Secondment in academic host, with Prof. Martijn Wubs (DTU, Denmark) is arranged to pursue scientific objectives, enriching Ruihuan's learning experience, expanding his network in Europe and maximizing the impact of research and training on the EU society and industry.

Keywords: phonon,quantum lock in,microwave,nv centers
Deconvolving the early record of eukaryotic evolution (DNE)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Earth System Science
Panel description: Physical geography, geo logy, geophysics, atmospheric sciences, oceanography, climatology, cryology, ecology, global environmental change, biogeochemical cycles, natural resources management
Countries involved: Germany
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2024-STG, 2024)
Start date: 2025-08-01
End date: 2030-07-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1859131.0
EU funding (EUR): 1859131.0
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

The Neoproterozoic Era (1 to 0.54 billion years ago) witnessed some of the most dramatic ecological and evolutionary changes in Earth history, which culminated in the appearance and diversification of animals. After almost 4 billion years of bacterial dominance, it took life on our planet just ~250 million years to go from the proliferation of unicellular eukaryotes to diversification of animals. This sequence of rapid ecological and evolutionary changes is thought to be related to unprecedented environmental perturbations, which occurred during this time interval and are recorded in sedimentary rocks. We know these perturbations did happen, but not their magnitude, duration, or driving mechanisms. One of the major limitations of interpreting the data is that each sample represents tens, or even hundreds of years of sedimentation, and contains a mixture of unevenly preserved remains of organisms that lived throughout this time. This project focuses on new methodological approaches at the interface of organic geochemistry, isotope geochemistry, and palaeontology to deconvolve the mixed signals of ancient rocks. Stable carbon isotope analysis on biomarkers of specific groups of organisms would provide insights about the carbon cycle at their habitat; analysing biomarker composition of the first complex microfossils would allow to identify which organisms they were; position-specific isotopic composition of ancient biomarkers might reveal their biosynthetic pathway and thus identify the first ecologically successful eukaryotes on our planet. The study is designed to extract information about the composition and ecology of ancient ecosystems, as well as the history of carbon cycle throughout the critical time of the rise and diversification of complex life. It aims to resolve what it takes a habitable planet to evolve complex life, and, in turn, how life on our planet responded to possibly the largest perturbations in the global carbon cycle in the Earth history.

Keywords: geobiology,palaeontology,organic geochemistry,stable carbon isotope geochemistry,evolution,palaeoecology,precambrian,early eukaryote evolution,early animal evolution,palaeoenvironments,molecular fossils,carbon cycle
CARDEA - Career Acknowledgement for Research (Managers) Delivering for the European Area (Cardea)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Widening Participation and Strengthening the European Research Area
Programme: Reforming and enhancing the European R&I System
Theme: Reforming and enhancing the European R&I System
Destination: Reforming and enhancing the European R&I System
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: Ireland,Belgium,Greece,Croatia,Italy,Poland,Romania,Spain
Call: Towards a Europe-wide training and networking scheme for research managers (HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-ERA-01, 2021)
Start date: 2022-06-01
End date: 2026-07-31
Duration (months): 50.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1498312.51
EU funding (EUR): 1498312.0
Participants: 10
Project status: SIGNED

Cardea is the Roman Goddess of door pivots, ideal to describe our project to develop Research Managers (RM) who strengthen Europe's R&I excellence through a diverse set of support roles and responsibilities. Research Management as a profession is almost invisible from policy, career progression and tenure opportunities across Europe. Also, there is little consistency between countries, funders, policymakers and individual institutions. Cardea will develop supports to address this inequality. Our consortium has enjoyed considerable success doing this for Researchers already. We will create a detailed data-driven (500+ participants, 24 countries) knowledge space-defining and characterising the problem. Based on this, we will develop a range of solutions, including a Capacity Maturity Model to assess and improve RM activities, a novel RM Hub for networking and training to include a community of practice. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Widening Participation (EU13), Public-Private partnership actions will be at the core of our research, training and enhancement activities. Additionally, the mobility and networking of RM and those with responsibility for developing RMs will be included to ensure the RM ecosystem grows transnationally. We will learn from each other and support one another in bringing RM careers to the next level. Significantly these actions will provide a significant evidence base to advocate the inclusion of RM exigences in policy, and we will target this proactively, targeting 38 key decision making organisations. Amongst the impacts of Cardea will be an enduring network and Hub that can facilitate RM development and collaboration, a validated methodology to assess RM careers and a well-established baseline against which improvements can be objectively measured. This allows us to develop an RM Charter and offer a Concordat to institutions and organisations that make significant commitments to developing RM activities in a structured, mature manner.

Keywords: valorising research outputs,viability,equality
Structure and dynamics of PHage Attachment and Genome Ejection (PHAGE) (PHAGE)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Widening Participation and Strengthening the European Research Area
Programme: Widening participation and spreading excellence
Theme: Attracting and mobilising the best talents
Destination: Attracting and mobilising the best talents
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Life Sciences
Countries involved: Czechia
Call: Fostering balanced brain circulation – ERA Fellowships (HORIZON-WIDERA-2022-TALENTS-04, 2022)
Start date: 2023-08-01
End date: 2025-07-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 150438.72
EU funding (EUR): 150438.72
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Phages have the potential to be used in therapy because they can infect and kill pathogenic bacteria, including those resistant to antibiotics. Although phages are simple, details of their life cycle remain unknown. To start the infection, phages bind to and eject their genome into bacteria. During adsorption, the phage baseplate recognises receptors in the bacterial cell wall, and therefore determines the phage specificity. Structural knowledge of baseplates will enable the rational engineering of phage host range. Before ejection, the phage genome is stored inside the capsid under high pressure. Although numerous studies of genome ejection have been performed, the understanding of this process is still incomplete because, until now, no suitable methods for studying in vivo ejection existed. The adsorption and genome ejection are closely related processes that can only be best understood together. In this project, hosted at Dr Plevka’s laboratory (CEITEC), I aim to determine the high-resolution structure of the phiKZ baseplate, one of the largest known bacteriophages, using cryogenic Transmission Electron Microscopy. The obtained structural information will be complemented by the characterisation of the genome ejection dynamics in vivo. For this purpose, I will use cryogenic Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy to quantify the amount of DNA in phage heads at various stages of the infection. Furthermore, I will also use holotomography to visualise the ejection dynamics. There is still much to discover regarding bacterial adsorption and genome delivery. Thanks to my experience in phage and structural biology, I will integrate this project's results to shed light on the first steps of the phage life cycle, key to the infection of bacteria. My results will expand the understanding of phage infection and enable the retargeting of phages to specific bacterial strains, helping to develop phage therapy since antibiotic resistance is a rising health problem worldwide.

Keywords: bacteriophage,genome ejection,myoviridae,cryogenic electron transmission microscopy,cryogenic scanning transmission electron microscopy
The domestication, evolution, and adaptive role of horizontal gene transfer in eukaryotes. (DeNovo-HGT)

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: Austria
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2025-05-01
End date: 2027-04-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 328835.31
EU funding (EUR): 230184.72
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The emergence and acquisition of new genes play a crucial role in the evolution of eukaryotes, providing new functions that contribute to adapting to changing environments and conquering unexplored niches through cellular innovations. Horizontal gene transfer (HGT), defined as the acquisition of genetic material from different species, has been shown to play a key role in eukaryotic genome evolution. HGT, particularly from bacteria and viruses, provides unprecedented adaptive potential by introducing novel functions into eukaryotic cells. However, new genes are often quickly lost because important constraints and evolutionary barriers need to be overcome for successful integration into the host genome. Despite the importance of HGT for eukaryotic biology, how this process works is still unclear and the mechanisms that contribute to the domestication of foreign genes, especially at the early stages, are unexplored. This project aims to develop a new experimental model for investigating HGT in eukaryotes using the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. For this, a bacterial antibiotic resistance gene (aphVIII) will be randomly integrated into the C. reinhardtii genome and its real-time functionalisation and evolutionary trajectories will be tracked. Using experimental evolution, I will identify genomic features that have a major impact on the control and stability of new genes. Additionally, I will analyze how HGT contributes to adaptation and impacts evolutionary flexibility in different scenarios. Finally, I will survey green algal diversity to understand how HGT contributed to the evolution of chlorophytes. Hence, this interdisciplinary project, combining molecular biology, experimental evolution, and computational methods, will offer unprecedented insights into the mechanisms of HGT in eukaryotes and answer fundamental questions in evolutionary biology, many of which have important implications for genome engineering and biotechnology.

Keywords: horizontal gene transfer chlamydomonas experimental evolution
Synthetic Cells for Functional Food Platforms (NutriCells)

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: Israel
Call: ERC PROOF OF CONCEPT GRANTS2 (ERC-2022-POC2, 2022)
Start date: 2023-07-01
End date: 2024-12-31
Duration (months): 18.0
Total project cost (EUR): 150000.0
EU funding (EUR): 150000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Global food shortage together with economical stress poses a nutritional threat to various populations. For elders, food shortage affects health and well-being and is directly associated with immune and neurological deficiencies. Synthetic cells (SC) – lipid-based vesicles composed of essential fatty acids and loaded with immune-supporting vitamins and nutrients have been suggested as economical nutritional supplements that can be produced at large-scale and integrated into generic food matrices to improve their nutritional value. In this research program, we propose to develop nourishing SC targeted to deficiencies of the immune and neurological systems, to support the aging body.
Flow-induced anisotropic mechanical response of dense suspensions (SuspenseStory)

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: France
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2023 (HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01, 2023)
Start date: 2024-06-01
End date: 2026-05-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 211754.88
EU funding (EUR): 211754.88
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

Dense suspensions are complex fluids, like shampoo or concrete, with equal parts of particles and liquid. Large particles necessitate external forces for movement, causing mechanical properties to depend on shear history. This is currently not understood nor well characterized and is a major obstacle for the modeling of its flows with quickly varying conditions, which are ubiquitous in industry (e.g. extrusion, drilling) or in nature (e.g. landslides). This project will unravel how flow history controls the mechanical response of suspensions. The viscosity of a suspension of hard particles under a quickly varying flow can be much smaller than a steady flow because the anisotropic microstructure is too slow to evolve and provide a strong resistance. For the same reason, a jammed suspension of soft particles can retain stresses even after flow stops. So far, only shear stress has been studied, and the microstructure-stress relation remains poorly characterized. Advanced particle-based simulations, considering hydrodynamics and complex contact physics, allow precise exploration of this relationship. Separately, a new generation of microscopics-informed constitutive models show great promise to predict the evolution of the stress under arbitrary flow history but remain tested only in limited setups. We aim at characterizing the full stress tensor response under shear rotations, i.e. model time-dependent flows where the strain axes are suddenly rotated. We will determine the contribution of hydrodynamics, elastic, frictional interactions to the response, and how these depend on particle softness. We will use our results as stringent tests for current constitutive models. The last goal is to achieve quantitative match with experiments performing shear rotations on suspensions of polystyrene (hard) and Carbopol (soft) performed by collaborators, which report intriguing observations of transient tangential stresses orthogonal to the flow direction.

Keywords: dense suspensions