Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
1,000 ancient genomes: gene-economy innovation in cattle, sheep and goat (AncestralWeave)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: The study of the human past
Panel description: Archaeology, history and memory
Countries involved: Ireland
Call: ERC Advanced Grant (ERC-2019-ADG, 2019)
Start date: 2020-12-01
End date: 2025-11-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2499198.75
EU funding (EUR): 2499198.75
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The genetic threads of goat, cattle and sheep ancestry have been woven by human breeding, environmental pressures, hybridisation and the chance effects of genetic drift. The ancestral weaves of these key animals intertwine with human creativity in the most profoundly innovative episodes of the human past. Three broad episodes of particular import were: initial domestications circa 11 kya in Southwest Asia; the intensification circa 6 kya of use of those animal products which are harvested without killing such as wool, milk and traction; and the development of exceptionally productive landraces, later formalized into breeds, in recent millennia. However, each of these is loosely defined in time and space, the key traits are often osteologically invisible, and the vectors of causality in their virtuous cycles of gene-economy innovation are completely unknown. A combination of high coverage ancient whole genome data coupled with new analysis methods that allow efficient computation of genomewide locus genealogies will be used to untangle the threads of ancestry in sheep, cattle and goat across the whole genome in these transformative phases. Combining these with additional low coverage genomes generated from less preserved samples will generate a total set of 1,000 ancient animal genomes. These data will be unprecedented and will allow tracking of selection at trait genes, in order to detect human agency in breeding and, in collaboration with archaeologist partners, asking are there periods and places where threads of innovation coalesce. The project will also use ancient epigenetics to explore archaeological variation in gene activation patterns and will seek to understand the problematic build up of harmful mutations that threaten livestock today. With cognate disciplines, it will compare signals of animal mobility identifying distinct genetic strata correlating with archaeological horizons and affording the prospect of DNA-dating in future excavation.

Keywords: cattle genomics,sheep genomics,goat genomics,ancient dna,domestication,paleogenomics,archaeozoology,animal genetics
Microfluidic Tuning of Individual Nanoparticles to Understand and Improve Electrocatalysis (MITICAT)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Physical and analytical chemical sciences
Panel description: Analytical chemistry, chemical theory, physical chemistry/chemical physics
Countries involved: Germany
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2020-STG, 2020)
Start date: 2021-07-01
End date: 2026-06-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1498905.0
EU funding (EUR): 1498905.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Transition metal based nanoparticles (NPs) are envisioned as viable alternatives to the scarce precious metal based catalysts used today for renewable energy conversion. Yet, probing their intrinsic activity to establish property-activity relations and so to smartly design superior catalysts, is impeded by two limitations of existing electrocatalytic techniques. First, the integral assessment of ensembles of non-identical NPs prohibits the identification of intrinsic activity differences. Second, the unknown effects of additives required analyzing the activity of often poorly conductive transition metal oxides, e.g. during the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), prohibit the access to quantitative data and comparable benchmarks. Very recently, we have proposed single NP electrochemistry to overcome both limitations. We demonstrated that the electrocatalytic OER response of individual CoFe2O4 NPs can be assessed in the absence of additives. However, we have not been able to extract property-activity relations, as NP characterization was limited to ex situ data. The groundbreaking strategy of this work is to combine intrinsic activity and physical property measurements of individual NPs. Physical characterization will comprise different online and ex situ methods to gain comprehensive property information. Numerical simulations will allow us to extract quantitative kinetic data from the electrochemical studies, allowing us to provide quantitative benchmarks of intrinsic catalyst performance. Cycling of NPs in a microfluidic platform will enable degradation studies and systematic modification “on the fly”. Moving towards application conditions, catalyst-support interactions will be studied by stepwise immobilization of catalysts on substrates. As a result of revealing intrinsic property-activity relations in electrocatalysis and of elucidating catalyst-support interactions, we will gain the understanding urgently needed to disruptively change electrocatalyst devolopment.

Keywords: single entity electrochemistry,nono particle characterization,microfluidics
100% Bacteria free eggs for use in production of human and animal vaccines (OvaVAx)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Industrial Leadership
Programme: Innovation in SMEs
Action type: SME instrument
Countries involved: Ireland
Call: SME instrument (H2020-SMEInst-2018-2020-2, 2019)
Start date: 2019-06-01
End date: 2021-11-30
Duration (months): 30.0
Total project cost (EUR): 3366875.0
EU funding (EUR): 2356812.5
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Disruptive technology for improved quality and viral yield in egg-based vaccine production and other biotechnology applications. Ovagen Group Ltd. (OGL) is an innovation-based biotechnology company, led by serial entrepreneurs, providing specialist contract services to Biopharma, Pharmaceutical and Vaccine industries. OGL specialises in avian Germ-Free (GF) technology and avian transgenics to Good Manufacturing Practice standards. The company’s vision is to be the go-to supplier of superior quality GF eggs to the vaccine industry globally by 2021. INNOVATION: The founders Dr Leonard Moran CEO and Dr Catherine Caulfield COO together with external VC investors and Enterprise Ireland have invested €12.91M in seven years of R&D, utilising the considerable skills, expertise and experience of our team within this field to develop a unique and novel, patent protected process to enable commercially viable production of the World’s first germ-free (GF) eggs, to eliminate bacterial contamination through eggs for vaccine development and production. This will result in improved quality, production costs and viral yields for vaccine manufacturers leading to cost and availability benefits for health service providers for immunisation programmes to protect the health and lives of populations whilst enabling a rapid response to Global pandemic demands. There is exceptionally strong market pull for our innovative disruptive technology, and the increasing use of vaccines to support global demand for quality eggs estimated CAGR of 8.8% and market value of USD 1.89Bn by 2022. OPPORTUNITY: Over 1bn fertilised specific pathogen free (SPF) chicken eggs are used annually in vaccine manufacture, servicing a vaccine market size estimated to be worth €48bn by 2021 with an AGR of 8.3%.

Keywords: germ free eggs vaccine production
Drivers and impacts of invertebrate herbivores across forest ecosystems globally. (ECOHERB)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Earth system science
Panel description: Physical geography, geology, geophysics, atmospheric sciences, oceanography, climatology, cryology, ecology, global environmental change, biogeochemical cycles, natural resources management
Countries involved: Sweden,Sweden
Call: ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2015-CoG, 2015)
Start date: 2016-03-01
End date: 2023-02-28
Duration (months): 84.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1750000.0
EU funding (EUR): 44579.25
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

Forests slow global climate change by absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide but this ecosystem service is limited by soil nutrients. Herbivores potentially alter soil nutrients in a range of ways, but these have mostly only been recorded for large mammals. By comparison, the impacts of the abundant invertebrates in forests have largely been ignored and are not included in current models used to generate the climate predictions so vital for designing governmental policies The proposed project will use a pioneering new interdisciplinary approach to provide the most complete picture yet available of the rates, underlying drivers and ultimate impacts of key nutrient inputs from invertebrate herbivores across forest ecosystems worldwide. Specifically, we will: (1) Establish a network of herbivory monitoring stations across all major forest types, and across key environmental gradients (temperature, rainfall, ecosystem development). (2) Perform laboratory experiments to examine the effects of herbivore excreta on soil processes under different temperature and moisture conditions. (3) Integrate this information into a cutting-edge ecosystem model, to generate more accurate predictions of forest carbon sequestration under future climate change. The network established will form the foundation for a unique long-term global monitoring effort which we intend to continue long after the current funding time scale. This work represents a powerful blend of several disciplines harnessing an array of cutting edge tools to provide fundamentally novel insights into an area of direct and urgent importance for the society.

Keywords: data model integration,indirect climate drivers,plant herbivore interactions,plant soil linkages,trophic interactions
Mediterranean practitioners’ network capacity building for effective response to emerging security challenges (MEDEA)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Societal Challenges
Programme: Secure societies - protecting freedom and security of Europe and its citizens
Theme: Fight crime, illegal trafficking and terrorism, including understanding and tackling terrorist ideas and beliefs
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: Spain,Italy,Israel,Ireland,Spain,Albania,Germany,Cyprus,Greece,Greece,Romania,Bulgaria,Belgium,France,Portugal
Call: Pan European Networks of practitioners and other actors in the field of security (H2020-SEC-2016-2017-2, 2017)
Start date: 2018-06-01
End date: 2023-11-30
Duration (months): 66.0
Total project cost (EUR): 3495843.75
EU funding (EUR): 3495843.75
Participants: 22
Project status: SIGNED

The Mediterranean and Black Sea region is characterised by a very volatile and dynamically changing security environment that pose severe threats and challenges on the societies and prosperity. The MEDEA project, during its 66 months of implementation provides funding for four interrelated actions: (i) Establish and Operate the MEDEA network, a multi-disciplinary network of security practitioners, with active links to policy makers and users/providers of security innovations across the M&BS countries focusing in Border Protection and other Security- and Disaster-Related tasks. During the project duration, MEDEA members will engage in activities towards maintaining its sustainability and longevity after the financing of this project ends, (ii) Engage participants in anticipatory governance on emerging security challenges that the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions would face in the coming years (present until +10 years), which concretely operationalizes the backbone of the project in a triple structure: a) understanding unsatisfactory state of play, b) design the desirable future and c) define a resilient pathway on how to achieve this, (iii) Push for the “co-creation” of security technology and capabilities innovations between practitioners and innovation suppliers, which is based upon their evaluation and prioritization on multi-criteria analysis (technology, operational and cost-benefit, etc.) and also linked to Human Development, Policy Making and Organizational Improvements in-terms of facilitating its use by the practitioners (iv) Establish and annually update the Mediterranean Security Research and Innovation Agenda (MSRIA), that identifies areas where security & defence research is needed and the establishment of recommendations for European Security & Defence technology investments.

Keywords: practitioners network,security challenges,capabilities,mediterranean,black sea,foresight,scenario,emerging threat,research innovation agenda,industry,border management,migration,crisis
Active probing of brain excitability by electrical micro-stimulations for drug discovery (EXCITATOR)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Proof of concept grants
Action type: ERC actions
Countries involved: France,France
Call: ERC-Proof of Concept (ERC-2017-PoC, 2017)
Start date: 2018-04-01
End date: 2019-09-30
Duration (months): 18.0
Total project cost (EUR): 150000.0
EU funding (EUR): 66345.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

The overall objective of EXCITATOR is to transfer the methods developed in the F-TRACT ERC project (f-tract.eu) around the concept of active probing of brain states with the industrialization goal to make them applicable for fast drug discovery in animal models. The industrialization process will be prepared in collaboration with Synapcell SAS, a biotechnology company that provides the biopharmaceutical industry with innovative drug discovery programs. EXCITATOR has one scientific objective (O), which requires achieving one proof-of-concept (PoC): • O – Cortical excitability as a read-out for drug screening. Electrodes will be inserted in the cortex and deep brain structures of rodents in control conditions. Under the acute challenge of drugs injected in animals, the changes of oscillatory power and cortical excitability as quantified in responses to micro-stimulations will be monitored. Our main scientific goal is to demonstrate that intracranial EEG (iEEG) responses to micro-stimulations will be more sensitive than standard iEEG power analysis to quantify the effects of drugs. • PoC – Automatised active probing platform for drug screening: For an industrial use, we will need to automatize the iEEG data recording and processing in animal models. In practice, we will transfer the most relevant functionalities of the FTRACT technology that relies on a human database with automatic data processing. Experimentally, some constraints related to small animals will need to be solved, like defining electrode configurations that maximize neural responses and minimize stimulation artefacts. Eventually, we aim at delivering an innovative and fully integrated drug screening platform from iEEG responses to micro-stimulations.

Keywords: neurostimulation,signal processing,electrophysiology,animal models,drug testing,brain
Next gEneration Sequence sTORage (NESTOR)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Individual Fellowships (IF)-Global Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Information Science and Engineering
Countries involved: France,United States
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2016, 2016)
Start date: 2017-09-01
End date: 2020-08-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 246668.4
EU funding (EUR): 246668.4
Participants: 3
Project status: CLOSED

Sequential data are everywhere, from DNA sequences to astronomical light curves, and from aircraft engine monitoring data to the prices of stock options. Recent advances in various fields such as those of data storage, networking and sensing technologies, have allowed organizations to gather overwhelming amounts of sequential data at unprecedented speeds. This wealth of information enables analysts to identify patterns, find abnormalities, and extract knowledge. It is noteworthy that common practice in various domains is to use custom data analysis solutions, usually built using higher level programming languages, such as R/Python. Such techniques, however, while commonly acceptable in small data processing scenarios, are unfit for larger scale data management and exploration. This is because they come in contrast to all previous database research, not taking advantage of indexes, physical data independence, query optimization, and data processing methods, designed for scalability. In these domains, database systems are used merely for storing and retrieving data and not as the sophisticated query processing systems they are. Current relational storage layers cannot handle the access patterns that analysts of sequential data are interested in, without scanning large amounts of unnecessary data or without large processing overhead. Thus, making complex analytics inefficient. In order to exploit this new opportunity, we plan to develop specialized data series storage and retrieval systems, which will allow analysts – across different fields – to efficiently manipulate the sequences of interest. The proposed research project, named NESTOR (Next gEneration Sequence sTORage), has the potential of great economic and social impact in Europe as multiple scientific and industrial fields are currently in need of the right tools, in order to handle their massive collections of data series.

Keywords: time series,data series,sequences,big data,database systems,storage engines,indexing
European Tools and Methodologies for an efficient ageing management of nuclear power plant Cables (TeaM Cables)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Euratom
Programme: Nuclear fission and radiation protection
Theme: Nuclear safety
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Italy,Germany,Germany,Finland,Poland,France,France,France,Czechia
Call: Continually improving safety and reliability of Generation II and III reactors (NFRP-2016-2017-1, 2016)
Start date: 2017-09-01
End date: 2022-08-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 5512068.74
EU funding (EUR): 4179344.0
Participants: 17
Project status: CLOSED

The lifetime of existing NPPs can potentially be extended to between 60 and 80 years if safety and operability of facilities can be guaranteed. With an average of 25 000 cables for a total length of 1 500 km per nuclear power plant (NPP) unit, all organisations involved in the current and next generation of NPPs have recognised the importance of cable qualification, condition monitoring, and ageing management. Cables, especially their insulation and jacket materials made of polymers, are vulnerable to ageing degradation during normal operation and accidents and means must be established to ensure that cable ageing does not lead to unsafe operation. Latest developments in polymer ageing research have revealed important limits in current methods for estimating the lifetime of NPP cables. These are related to the lack of representativeness of accelerated ageing and the lack of consideration of the polymer composition (e.g. fillers, additives, antioxidants) in cable ageing models. TeaM Cables will develop a novel multiscale approach for more precise estimation of the cable lifetime. The project will analyse the effects of irradiation and temperatures on cables from micro- to macroscale level, in order to develop multiscale models of ageing. Ageing in normal operation conditions and accidental conditions will be addressed. The unique multi-scale and kinetic models produced by the project will be integrated into an open access tool – the TeaM Cables tool - which will be built on the merger of a currently used European cable management tool with a cable ageing modelling tool. In parallel, criteria and protocols for on-site use of non-destructive testing techniques will be proposed. The TeaM Cables multiscale modelling approach and associated tools will allow NPP operators to safely extend the plant life duration of generation II and III reactors and thus contribute to the production of sustainable energy responding to future energy needs.

Keywords: long term operation,safety,cables,multi scale physics,ageing,numerical tool,modelling,accident testing,polymers,non destructive techniques
Control of Vibronic Coupling in Hybrid Perovskites and its Impact on Charge Transport (PeroVIB)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Individual Fellowships (IF)-Standard European Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Chemistry
Countries involved: United Kingdom
Call: Individual Fellowships (H2020-MSCA-IF-2020, 2020)
Start date: 2021-07-01
End date: 2023-06-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 224933.76
EU funding (EUR): 224933.76
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Owing to the “soft” nature of perovskite lattice, structural deformations (vibrations) play a crucial role in modulating the electronic dynamics of perovskites. In fact, one may engineer the key optoelectronic properties of this class of materials by tuning the coupling strength between photoexcited charge carriers and lattice phonons. Experimental realization of such vibronic coupling in the compositional space of perovskites remains so far unexplored. Herein through this project, I aim to identify the crucial vibrational modes of hybrid perovskites (of various compositions and dimensions) that influence the electronic dynamics and charge transport in real electronic devices of them. To address this fundamental problem, I plan to develop double-resonant excitation (infrared pre-excitation prior to electronic excitation) based "Vibrationally Promoted Electronic Resonance" spectroscopic technique that will give a direct access to monitor the vibrational dynamics of organic and inorganic sub-lattice in the electronically excited state of the hybrid perovskites. This technique is specifically proposed here for probing the vibronic coupling of these soft materials with high mode-selectivity. We will further explore pump-push photocurrent spectroscopy on real functional electronic devices of those perovskites to identify the role of structural fluctuations in modulating the charge transport efficiency. This unique hybrid spectroscopic approach will provide wealth of information from fundamental structural dynamics to device performance; which will enable us to develop design rules of structure-function relationship to maximize the efficiency of perovskite devices. This research program will not only provide an opportunity to enhance my research skills, which in turn will facilitate to launch my independent research group in future but also outcome of the project will advance the current research field by replacing the current assumptions with the experimental findings.

Keywords: hybrid perovskites,ultrafast spectroscopy,photocurrent spectroscopy,polaron,lattice vibrations,carrier phonon coupling