Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Enhancing Industrial Cultivation: A Breakthrough Approach Using Methylated Compounds to Expedite Microbial Growth (FastMicrobes)

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 GRANTS (ERC-2023-POC, 2023)
Start date: 2024-07-01
End date: 2025-12-31
Duration (months): 18.0
Total project cost (EUR): 150000.0
EU funding (EUR): 150000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Accelerating Microbial Cultivation through Lag Phase Shortening using Methylated Compounds Industries reliant on microbial cultivation face high production costs, with the cultivation process accounting for 20-40% of the total. However, conventional strategies often overlook the lag phase, an early growth phase in which bacteria do not grow that significantly elongates the cultivation process and impacts production costs. Recent findings arising from our ERC-funded research, reveal a ground-breaking mechanism for modulating bacterial lag phase duration. Through the addition of naturally abundant methylated compounds during the lag phase, we demonstrate a strategy to expedite bacterial growth by up to 10 hours. This approach, previously unexplored due to technical challenges, could revolutionize industrial cultivation, reducing costs and enhancing product yield. Our ERC-funded research uncovered a novel regulatory circuit influencing the bacterial lag phase. In our research of algal-bacterial routes of metabolic exchange, we discovered that abundant methylated compounds that are produced by algae and plants can significantly expedite the lag phase of various bacteria. Detailed insights into this mechanism enabled tailored treatments that shorten lag phases by utilizing methylated compounds. This approach presents a safe, affordable, and unique solution for industry challenges. In this proposal, we outline a comprehensive plan to address current industrial cultivation challenges and exploit our innovative approach. By leveraging methylated compounds to expedite lag phases, both in bacteria and yeast, we aim to optimize yield, revolutionize microbial cultivation, and potentially transform an industry with an expected value of $130-180 billion by 2030.
Meiotic adaptation to allopolyploidy (MeioPoly)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Integrative B iology : from Genes and Genomes to S ystems
Panel description: For all organis ms: Genetics, epigenetics, genomics  and other ‘omics studies , bioinformatics, systems biology , genetic diseases , gene editing, innovative methods and modelling,  ‘omics for personalised  medicine
Countries involved: France
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2023-STG, 2023)
Start date: 2024-01-01
End date: 2028-12-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1496630.0
EU funding (EUR): 1496630.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Hybridization between related species resulting in allopolyploidy is ubiquitous in the evolutionary history of plants. Such nascent allopolyploids face the challenge of ensuring accurate chromosome segregation during meiosis in the presence of related, but non-identical chromosome sets (called homoeologues), inherited from the allopolyploid’s progenitors. Essential for fertility, this relies upon the formation of physical connections (crossovers) between homologous chromosomes, while crossovers between homoeologues - that could lead to aneuploidy - must be prevented. Meiotic stability in the allopolyploid context thus requires a tight control of recombination partner choice. The existence of highly fertile natural allopolyploids shows that solutions exist and have arisen many times during evolution, but the mechanisms involved remain poorly understood. My goal is to elucidate the evolutionary processes of meiotic stabilization of nascent allopolyploids, with a special emphasis on the molecular mechanisms that prevent recombination between homoeologous chromosomes. I propose to recreate in the lab the natural hybridization that happened ~16 Kya between A. thaliana and A. arenosa leading to Arabidopsis suecica in order to characterize the mechanisms underlying the evolution of the young allopolyploids over the first generations as they acquire meiotic stability and full fertility. The proposed project has three main objectives: (1) map and characterize genome-wide recombination between homoeologues; (2) identify the factors that control homoeologous pairing and recombination and (3) elucidate how this control is progressively set up in newly formed allopolyploids. Our studies have the potential to bring new and fundamental insights on the evolutionary processes enabling meiotic stabilization of nascent allopolyploids and to contribute to polyploid crop improvement through knowledge transfer to plant breeding programs.

Keywords: polyploidy,meiosis,evolution,recombination,homoeologous chromosomes,plants,arabidopsis
Corporate Moral Progress (CMP)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Texts and Concepts
Panel description: Literary studies , literature,  philosophy
Countries involved: Ireland
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2022-STG, 2022)
Start date: 2023-05-01
End date: 2028-04-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1371715.0
EU funding (EUR): 1371715.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Within business ethics, there is a longstanding debate concerning Corporate Moral Responsibility, the question of whether corporations themselves are the kinds of things that can be responsible for wrongdoing. Proponents of this view hope to vindicate our sense that firms are the appropriate targets of blame and censure. However, proponents have failed to decisively make their case, and they have also failed to come to terms with the magnitude of corporate wrongdoing. Even if firms are possibly responsible, this is far short of showing that corporations have the sensitivity, incentives, position, to be anything but accidental agents for good, let alone equal members of the moral community. As corporations are some of the most significant actors in modern society, this presents a real problem. If it is right to think that corporations have genuine obligations, then a sincere effort must be made to come to terms with why they fail to meet them as well as how to train firms to behave morally in the future. In short, corporations need a moral education. Given this, CMP is broken into three objectives: - It will consider whether corporations are capable of being morally responsible for their actions. - It will uncover the challenges to corporate moral conduct. - It will determine whether and how to facilitate corporate moral progress. CMP will meet these objectives with resources far outside of business ethics. Defending corporate moral agency involves using cutting-edge work within metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of action. Understanding corporate wrongdoing requires reconceiving of how corporations make moral decisions and are motivated to act on them, as well as the nature of their privilege in society. And determining how to improve firms morally requires integrating work on moral education and moral progress with management disciplines such as strategic management. By doing all of this, CMP will pursue concrete ways to improve firms for good.

Keywords: business ethics corporate moral responsibility moral pscyhology
Next generation advanced RNA inhibition therapy to treat cardiometabolic disease (LiverTarget)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Health
Theme: Health
Destination: Unlocking the full potential of new tools, technologies and digital solutions for a healthy society
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Finland,Italy,Germany,Denmark,Greece,Netherlands,Sweden,Portugal
Call: Next generation advanced therapies to treat highly prevalent and high burden diseases with unmet medical needs (HORIZON-HLTH-2021-TOOL-06, 2021)
Start date: 2022-05-01
End date: 2027-04-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 6000000.0
EU funding (EUR): 6000000.0
Participants: 9
Project status: SIGNED

RNA Therapeutics comprise a new rapidly expanding category of drugs including small interfering RNAs (siRNA) and messenger RNAs (mRNA) that have attracted tremendous interest recently due to their first in-class drug approvals and notable success of the mRNA vaccines in the clinic. Obesity, diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), in turn, are highly prevalent devastating diseases of our times despite available medicines, accounting for more than one in two deaths worldwide. They frequently co-exist, in the same patient, and constitute independent risk factors for each other; yet, unified approaches directed against common targets and shared mechanisms are lacking. LiverTarget aims at exploiting Partners years of research in the field of cardiometabolic research, the identification of ceramide pathways and inflammatory targets, and the development of novel siRNA technologies and lipid formulations, to: 1. Generate innovative siRNA pools and synthetic mRNAs to regulate ceramide and inflammatory targets in the liver. 2. Formulate them in established human-approved liver-targeting lipid nanoparticles (LNP). 3. Determine their efficacy in vivo in preclinical mouse models of obesity, diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and atherosclerosis. 4. Complete the necessary safety and toxicology evaluation of the most promising lead candidates and prepare the preclinical evaluation dossier for the European Medicines Agency (EMA). This will result in a set of novel RNA-LNP formulations, directed against targets shared between ASCVD, diabetes and NAFLD, with demonstrated efficacy and toxicology, ready for further clinical development. It will also open up new directions of research towards the development innovative RNA therapeutics against liver targets for the treatment of cardiometabolic diseases, ultimately benefiting the patient, the society and the economy.

Keywords: sirna,nanomedicine,ceramides,cardiovascular disease,diabetes,nash
Between domestication and ferality: cattle-human relationships in the making of post-colonial South-American society (CowDom)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: The Soci al World and Its Interactions
Panel description: Sociology, social psychology, education  sciences , communication  studies
Countries involved: Italy
Call: ERC CONSOLIDATOR GRANTS (ERC-2022-COG, 2022)
Start date: 2023-09-01
End date: 2028-08-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1611768.0
EU funding (EUR): 1611768.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Starting with Columbus’ third trip to the Caribbean, Iberian cattle accompanied humans in the colonization of the South American continent. Since then, the cattle population has grown exponentially all over the region, adapting to a variety of local ecologies, being exported all over the world and leading to the cattle industry’s “spectacular” historical trajectory and economic success. Nevertheless, the increase in beef and diary cattle production brought along negative consequences such as deforestation, climate change and social inequality. Although the influence of cattle-human relationships on society has been an object of study since the beginnings of the anthropological discipline, the study of their entanglement with colonial ideologies and of their influence on South American society is just starting to take shape. In order to highlight cultural and historical trajectories and create a new framework of analysis, Cow-Dom will compare different forms of human-cattle relationships by focusing on opposing relational configurations of the domestication process - feral cattle on the one hand and the so-called racially "improved" cattle on the other - in some of the South American countries with the most intensive cattle production (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay). What values and ideologies, frictions and dilemmas, and what new socio-ecological systems did cattle’s presence enable both at the center and at the margins of society? In order to answer these questions, CowDom will rely on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in cattle fairs and in areas with feral and semi-feral cattle. The fieldwork will be carried out by interdisciplinary teams formed by zoologists and anthropologists. The project will establish an innovative theoretical framework to analyse cattle-human relationships in a post-colonial context and incorporate experimental research tools such as video making and the collaboration with a contemporary art museum in South America.

Keywords: multispecies ethnography plantationocene south american colonialism social anthropology of south america anthropology of domestication
Environmental gentrification and emerging collectives in uncertain times (TAKEBACK)

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,Canada
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2021 (HORIZON-MSCA-2021-PF-01, 2021)
Start date: 2023-09-01
End date: 2025-08-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 187248.96
EU funding (EUR): 187248.96
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

This project is an anthropological study of emerging forms of collective care at a moment where the interlocking crises of capitalism, democracy, and the environment have become more apparent than ever before. In the Global North, there is an increasing sense of urgency to enhance cities' sustainability. Yet, top-down paradigms of urban regeneration can contribute creating enclaves of environmental privilege, thereby excluding lower income and minority groups from their benefits. Much recent scholarly debate has focused on the multiple effects of evictions and displacements, as well as on active practices of resistance. But what happens if, after years of protests, grassroots groups become the main actors in processes of collective re-appropriation and management of urban spaces? TAKEBACK is based on an ethnographic study of collective reappropriations of vacant ex-industrial buildings, retrieved from top-down reconversion by activists and local residents in Montreal, Canada. By going beyond a view of social movements as bounded and organised entities, it explores the understudied topic of the “afterlives of a movement”, namely what happens when a heterogeneous political collective reaches some of its goals and, thus, changes shape, ambitions, and setting. It examines evolving trajectories and practices of collective care within activism, in order to contribute to debates on the shifting meanings of urban citizenship in an increasingly vulnerable world. TAKEBACK will allow me to gain new knowledge in the areas of urban geography and visual ethnography, to combine this with my previous expertise in political anthropology and ethnographic research, and to further my career prospects with a book monograph as major output of the fellowship. The project also speaks directly to EU missions directed at supporting the European Green Deal and Just Transition Mechanism.

Keywords: urban activism citizenship solidarity environmental gentrification montreal
AUTOMATING QCD RADIATIVE CORRECTIONS FOR INCLUSIVE HEAVY-QUARKONIUM PRODUCTION (AutomOnium)

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: Belgium
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2025-10-01
End date: 2027-09-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 200400.0
EU funding (EUR): 200400.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

In the realm of particle physics, quarkonium production stands as an alluring enigma, and efforts to realise a dynamic and collaborative interchange between theory and experiment in this frontier are yet to reach their full potential. Notwithstanding certain caveats, the broad field of quarkonium physics remains a pivotal tool in unravelling the inner structure of the proton and elucidating crucial unresolved challenges in particle physics. AutomOnium’s objective is to provide the first automated tool up to next-to-leading (NLO) accuracy for heavy-quarkonium production. This will be based on, and ultimately integrated into, the well known MadGraph5_aMC@NLO code, extending the current capabilities of high-energy particle physics cross section and event generators and enabling efficient and robust computations covering inclusive hadro- and photoproduction at particle colliders. Explicitly, the tool will be versatile enough to provide state-of-the-art theoretical predictions, encompassing the successful collinear and transverse-momentum-dependent factorisation methodologies in perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) in the kinematic regions where they are most applicable, for all heavy quarkonium. Such an endeavour will enrich the interactions between the theoretical and experimental high-energy particle physics communities and have a direct and far-reaching impact on the construction of physics cases for current and future experimental facilities. It will open up the possibility to enhance our knowledge of heavy quark bound state production, an area of QCD poorly known, as well as facilitate the first global phenomenological analyses using the plethora of quarkonium data from experiment. AutomOnium's science will be shared via the EU virtual access project NLOAccess and be conducted at Université Catholique de Louvain with expertise in QCD, particle physics and automation, allowing me to enhance myself both scientifically and autonomously.

Keywords: quarkonium physics,automation,qcd
FRAME – Fungal Research in the Age of Museomic Exploration: revisiting historical lichen collections (FRAME)

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: Norway,France
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2021 (HORIZON-MSCA-2021-PF-01, 2021)
Start date: 2022-09-20
End date: 2024-09-19
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 210911.04
EU funding (EUR): 210911.04
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

With current projections of fungal diversity estimated at 2.2 to 3.8 million species, only 3-5% of those species are currently accepted. Within this group, lichen-forming fungi comprise c. 17% of known fungal diversity, playing fundamental roles in the world ecosystems. However, considering that lichens are poorly studied, compared for example to angiosperms, global lichen diversity is widely underestimated, and this is further confounded by the fact that genetic material is sometimes the only way to uncover diversity hidden beneath their simple morphological structures. As researchers race to uncover such cryptic diversity, one resource ripe for exploitation is existing natural history museums, where thousands of lichen specimens have been preserved ranging from recent to centuries-old collections. FRAME seeks to use such existing resources to address this issue with the use of museomics, a novel approach to generate informative genomic sequences from historical collections, providing a cost-effective, efficient, and laborsaving technique to integrate essential organisms into our global biodiversity inventory. This project will not only determine the efficacy of using museomics on fungal collections, but will also provide novel insights into the evolutionary history of a charismatic lineage of lobarioid lichens whose diversity has been continually reclassified in the past decade primarily due to standard genetic analyses. While this project will involve an extensive and robust reclassification of lobarioid lichens as a whole, it will also use New Caledonia as a case study to determine both the efficacy of combining museomics with targeted fieldwork to provide biodiversity estimates, while also elucidating the factors that have led to insular lichen diversification. Thus, through FRAME, a novel and cutting-edge integration of relevant museum collections with modern bioinformatic techniques will be generated, providing an adaptable framework for use in other taxa.

Keywords: lichens,fungi,ascomycetes,biodiversity,museum,herbarium,evolution,natural history,genomics
CONVERSIO - Conversion, apostasy and religious change in Early Medieval Iberia (CONVERSIO)

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 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2026-09-01
End date: 2029-07-31
Duration (months): 35.0
Total project cost (EUR): 407584.02
EU funding (EUR): 407584.02
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

Cultural clashes, encounters and exchanges are part and parcel of what makes us humans. Throughout the history of humanity, uncountable encounters are documented, and even though these exchanges are not always equal in terms of the consequences they have for the groups involved, it is certain they all mutually influence each other, a process that brings about change. Religious conversion is one example of such encounters and exchanges, in which an old faith and world view must be substituted by a new one. The process of religious conversion can be highly diverse, but one feature remains the same: a converter that changes from one religion to another will inevitably be also an apostate. Thus, conversion and apostasy are two sides of the same coin. CONVERSIO will study the complex phenomenon of religious conversion and apostasy in Early Medieval Iberia, a region that offers an interesting case study because it witnessed multiple waves of migrations and conversions across its history. CONVERSIO puts contemporary discussions of culture clashes and the role of religion in society into historical context through a thorough reappraisal of earlier episodes of momentous religious change. This project aims to analyse Christian Latin sources relating to the conversion and apostasy of other peoples to Christianity and vice-versa, focusing on the interaction between Christians, Jews and Muslims from the 5th to the 9th century in Early medieval Iberia during the Visigothic Kingdom and the first period of Islamic domination. The analysis will investigate legal and religious discourse about apostates in order to understand how and why apostates were seen and dealt with, with so harsh measures. Ultimately, I aim to understand how the significance that religious communities ascribe to the ‘crime’ of apostasy can provide precious information about the solidity and coherence of their own religious identity.

Keywords: early medieval history,iberian studies,trans cultural studies,religious conversion