Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Plants as a window on emergent memory and computation in dynamical distributed multicellular systems (GROWsmart)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Condensed Matter Physics
Panel description: Structure, electronic properties, fluids, nanosciences, biological physics
Countries involved: Israel
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2024-STG, 2024)
Start date: 2024-10-01
End date: 2029-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1500000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Plants are multicellular organisms with no brain, yet they respond to external stimuli by coordinating their cells into strategic growth-driven movement, termed tropisms. Specifically, local sensory information is encoded, processed and propagated across the tissue via stochastic transport of growth hormones, and the plant responds by growing. Notably, information-processing and growth (actuation) are merged; thus plants are a unique case of morphological computation. However, they have yet to be studied from this perspective. Doing so could offer groundbreaking insights into distributed computation in physical and biological systems. This research aims to provide such insights, by identifying the physical principles governing how plants use stochastic transport of molecules to encode in memory and process sensory information, and coordinate optimal movement in a large number of cells, enabling complex navigation. I propose a 3-part multiscale study based on tropisms combining theory and experiments; I build on our recent findings, based on response theory, showing that wheat shoots’ tropic response depends on a history of stimuli-where shoots sum and subtract stimuli over different timescales. In Aim 1 (tissue level) I interpret memory as both a signal-processing and movement-control function, showing it is an emergent property ubiquitous in plants. I extract response functions from tropism experiments across species, organs and stimuli, and analyze them via signal-processing and control theory, identifying computational and movement-control capabilities. Aim 2 reveals the microscopic-level underpinnings of emergent memory; I will identify physical mechanisms relating stochastic properties of biological signaling, observed via live microscopy, to macroscopic responses. Aim 3 (organism level) will reveal how plants combine computation and movement control to solve navigational problems (e.g. gradient detection) and identify the physical limits of their capabilities.

Keywords: disordered systems,emergent memory,emergent computation,stochastic processes,response theory,signal processing,control theory,plant tropisms,auxin transport,behavior
Advanced CataLysts for H2-free hydrodeoxygenation - a rEVolutionary approach Enabling pRactical biomass upgrading to bioFUEL (CLEVER-FUEL)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Products and Processes Engineering
Panel description: Product and process design, chemical, civil, environmental, mechanical, vehicle engineering, energy processes and relevant computational methods
Countries involved: Spain
Call: ERC CONSOLIDATOR GRANTS (ERC-2024-COG, 2024)
Start date: 2026-06-01
End date: 2031-05-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1999478.75
EU funding (EUR): 1999478.75
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

CLEVER-FUEL proposes a revolutionary approach for low-carbon fuels production paving the way for a direct “waste to biofuels” conversion strategy. The project will develop a completely novel route to produce deoxygenated hydrocarbons – highly important chemical compounds in the biofuel and biochemical industries - via designing of advanced catalysts for the H2-free hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) process. This ground-breaking route take the edge over current biomass upgrading approaches which rely on high-pressure hydrogen – an expensive resource whose manipulation, transport and storage imposes serious limitations and represent a bottleneck to the commercial deployment of this technology. CLEVER-FUEL will create new chemistry and reaction engineering concepts to circumvent this handicap by using the cheapest and safest possible hydrogen source: water. The overriding goal is to create a new conversion pathway by using water as hydrogen donor and advanced multifunctional catalysts able to catalyse water reduction and hydrodeoxygenation simultaneously yielding oxygen-free biofuels. Such multifunctionality resolves the problem of oxygen-rich bio-compounds upgrading in a single reactor under mild conditions and avoiding the external supply of high-pressure hydrogen thus opening a completely new research avenue for biomass conversion technologies. CLEVER-FUEL will combine unique multifunctional catalysts with advanced operando characterisation techniques to provide a rational strategy for catalysts design. In addition, novel reactor concepts based on microchannel catalytic systems will be implemented to facilitate process intensification. CLEVER-FUEL represents a forward-thinking concept in catalysis and reaction engineering and it is conceived to open new horizons in bioenergy research unlocking the potential of biofuels and offering catalytic solutions to big society challenges in the pursuit of a low-carbon future.

Keywords: heterogenous catalysis,reaction engineering,biofuels,
VOlatiles in LAKe Ecosystem (VOLAKE)

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: Denmark
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2026-01-15
End date: 2028-01-14
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 263393.28
EU funding (EUR): 263393.28
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The project titled VOLAKE (Volatiles in Lake Ecosystem) aims to investigate the dynamics of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in freshwater environments, specifically focusing on lake ecosystems. VOCs are significant trace gases that play crucial roles in climate and environmental processes, yet their behavior in freshwater settings remains largely unexplored. This research seeks to fill critical knowledge gaps regarding VOCs in lakes, particularly their exchange with the atmosphere, vertical distribution within the water column, and relationship to ecological health indicators. The study will capitalize on advanced measurement technologies and interdisciplinary approaches to enhance understanding VOC dynamics. The objectives are threefold: first, to quantify VOC exchange between the lake and the atmosphere using eddy covariance (EC) methods; second, to map the vertical distribution of VOCs in the water column and analyze how they change over time; and third, to develop a supervised model linking VOC variability to key ecological indicators in Lake Geneva. The project will conduct intensive field measurements over a growing season, employing a platform called LéXPLORE for continuous data collection. The methodology combines direct flux measurements with detailed analyses of water column samples, utilizing state-of-the-art techniques like PTR-TOF-MS (Proton Transfer Reaction – Time of Flight – Mass Spectrometry and machine learning for data interpretation. These models will integrate satellite remote sensing data and lake hydrodynamics to contextualize findings on a broader scale. Ultimately, VOLAKE aims to pioneer continuous monitoring of VOC fluxes and provide a comprehensive understanding of their ecological roles. By bridging physical and biological perspectives, the project seeks to contribute significantly to ecological theories and freshwater management strategies, offering valuable insights into the impacts of environmental change on lake ecosystems.
Automatic Personalised Makeup Application (BEAUT)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Innovative Europe
Programme: European innovation ecosystems
Theme: Elevating the scalability potential of European business
Destination: Elevating the scalability potential of European business
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: Israel
Call: Women TechEU (HORIZON-EIE-2022-SCALEUP-02, 2022)
Start date: 2023-07-01
End date: 2024-06-30
Duration (months): 12.0
Total project cost (EUR): 107142.86
EU funding (EUR): 75000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

To meet societal expectations, the average woman finds herself having to spend two years of her life sitting in front of a mirror applying makeup. Several well-known issues make the self-application of makeup a challenging and inconvenient task that negatively impacts women’s quality of life. The majority of women report a lack of confidence in their ability to apply their makeup well. The situation is even worse for women of color who are not offered enough variety of shades, and for one in four women (in the US) with a physical disability impacting their ability to apply makeup. Yet, the $511 billion dollar beauty industry continues to offer women no better alternative than the traditional makeup tools that have existed for decades. Modern women need access to a more convenient makeup experience and we believe that automation is the key. That is why BeautAI is developing the world’s first automatic makeup application machine to help busy women achieve any makeup look in under four minutes by automated airbrush mechanics and proprietary, real-time color mixing.

Keywords: makeup,beauty,robotics,computer vision,ai,color mixing,airbrush
Pastoral Life in Common: An Anthropological Contribution to Resilience Research (PLACE)

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: Denmark
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2023 (HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01, 2023)
Start date: 2025-08-01
End date: 2027-07-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 230774.4
EU funding (EUR): 230774.4
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

For many of the world’s pastoralists, compelling environmental factors encourage extensive livestock management across common grazing land that provides food security for millions of humans and livestock. These pastoral commons are rapidly disappearing, despite having proved resilient for millennia. There is an urgent need to better understand the social processes that sustain resilient grazing commons. Dominant theories and policy initiatives directed at pastoral commons rely on an economistic model of human action, where individual appropriation of collective resources must be regulated by rules and clearly delineated property rights. PLACE seeks to invert conventional theories of common resource management by proposing a novel relational approach to resilient pastoral commons, built through social ties and practices of relatedness. To do so requires refocusing attention away from the grazing commons and onto the domestic space of pastoral households and public ceremonial occasions in pastoral communities. It is in these locations that the affective links between mothers, daughters and sisters build resilient pastoral commons. In synthesising a critical stance alongside a more positive proposal for relational resource use, we aim to deliver a radically new understanding of the social fabric underlying pastoral land-use. PLACE will be achieved through three research objects: (1) We will critically reappraise current anthropological and economic theories of the commons. (2) We will compare newly collected field data with anthropological accounts and archaeological evidence. (3) We will propose a new theoretical approach to the resilience of pastoral commons based on social relations.

Keywords: pastoral commons and collective governance land tenure property relations landscape governance resilience thinking
Engineering next-generation fusion proteins to dress the cell membrane with functionally enhanced receptors (DRESSCODE)

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: Germany
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): 1497778.0
EU funding (EUR): 1497778.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

No drug can be effective without an appropriate delivery system; this is why the development of formulations for effective and safe drug delivery currently raises major interests, in all clinical applications. While the use of therapeutic proteins has substantially increased in the last four decades, there is an entire class of proteins that has not yet been explored as drugs: the transmembrane receptors. In fact, the delivery of receptors for clinical applications remains very challenging and has only been achieved via genetic engineering of cells, referred as gene therapy. To date, most gene therapies remain extremely expensive and therefore, poorly accessible to patients. DRESSCODE proposes to innovate cutting-edge protein engineering technologies to deliver and enhance receptors at the cell membrane, using recombinant proteins only. By doing so, we aim to create a paradigm shift from genetic engineering to protein engineering of the cell membrane, with the ambition of developing cost-effective protein-based therapies. In DRESSCODE, we will first engineer independently the extracellular, intracellular, and transmembrane parts of a receptor, before combining our technologies to reconstruct functional receptors with enhanced bioactivity. Particularly, we will generate fusion proteins that 1) target the cell surface with super-avidity, to enhance receptor sensing; 2) penetrate the cell membrane and target its inner side, to enhance receptor signaling; and 3) insert across the cell membrane to reconstitute the receptor transmembrane domain using pH-low inserting peptides. DRESSCODE will demonstrate Proof-of-Technologies in two high-impact clinical applications, focusing on the engineering of VEGFR-2 for therapeutic angiogenesis and of the CAR for T cell-based cancer immunotherapy. Its success will lead to the development of novel therapeutic proteins and inspire the future use of receptors as drugs, while providing valuable tools for biological research.

Keywords: protein engineering,drug delivery,transmembrane receptors,cell membrane targeting,therapeutic angiogenesis,cancer immunotherapy
Interstellar Chiral Evolution‒Exploring Enantiomeric Excesses in Evolving Environments (ICE-EEVOLVE)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Physical and Analytical Chemical Sciences
Panel description: Analytical chemistry, chemical theory, physical chemistry/chemical physics
Countries involved: France
Call: ERC CONSOLIDATOR GRANTS (ERC-2024-COG, 2024)
Start date: 2025-09-01
End date: 2030-08-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2195000.0
EU funding (EUR): 2195000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The origin of life is a profound and experimentally challenging question, with an inherent bias for handed molecules at a chemical level. Homochirality, specifically the preference for left-handed (L-) amino acids in Earth's life, has inspired numerous studies. Meteorite samples provide evidence that this bias originated long before Earth's formation, tied to water-rich interstellar ices and circularly polarized starlight. Yet, we still lack a complete understanding of the chiral photon interaction with organic molecules under realistic astrophysical conditions where chiral species are embedded in an amorphous water-rich ice matrix. Intriguingly, amino acids in highly aqueous-altered meteorites show more than 20% enrichment in L enantiomers, indicating hitherto undiscovered asymmetric amplification mechanisms during secondary alteration processes within parent celestial bodies. While extraerrestrial amino acids have been extensively studied, sugar monomers and aminonitriles are equally important, potentially serving as precursors to amino acids. Neglecting their chiral bias and the prospects of a possible chirality transfer or mutual chiral amplification mechanisms between amino acids and sugars represents a gap in current research. The ICE-EEVOLVE project aims to unravel the journey of amorphous ice and chiral organics from molecular clouds to evolved planetary systems, exploring asymmetric chemical evolution influenced by circularly polarized starlight and alteration processes. This will be achieved through novel laboratory experiments on amorphous interstellar ices processed using synchrotron, laser, and hydrogen lamp sources, combined with enantioselective analyses of pristine extraterrestrial samples. Our research is guided by the idea that the co-evolutionary history of peptides and nucleic acids in biology is linked to the inherent chirality of their constituent monomers, possibly originating in presolar and Solar System (water-rich) bodies.

Keywords: chirality,asymmetric photochemistry,enantioselective resolution,gas chromatography,circular dichroism,interstellar ice,origin of life,meteorite,icy bodies in the solar system
Indigenous women, nonhuman world and gender: Comparing the Amazon and Siberia (ecofem.indi)

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: Portugal,Colombia
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2022 (HORIZON-MSCA-2022-PF-01, 2022)
Start date: 2024-04-01
End date: 2026-03-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 172618.56
EU funding (EUR): 172618.56
Participants: 3
Project status: SIGNED

ECOFEMINDI investigates the relations between women and nonhuman world, importance of traditional ecological knowledge that women possess in indigenous societies and how this knowledge affects the role of women, their status and prestige in the household and the society they live in. After decades of discussions about nature/culture dichotomy and the dominant role of humans on nature and other nonhuman persons, today ecofeminists agree that there is also a parellel between the domination of nature and exploitation of women. Meanwhile, in the middle of environmental conflicts, political ontology discuss the need for pluriverse as a possibility instead of dualism of human and animals in Western world, taking indigenous ideas about their geography that involves nonhumans and master spirits more seriously. Siberia and Amazon regions often host the base for theoretical discussions about animism and nonhuman persons in literature. However, the gender perspective of these ontologies is hardly mentioned and this caused the human-environment relations being described rarely through the lens of critical feminist anthropology. Ecofem.indi aims to go beyond the literature that depict women only as victims of environmental degradation and asks if in societies where the separation of nature from the human world is not that strict, such as some indigenous societies, does this automatically assign women who are associated with nature to a higher status ? And secondly, do women have a different ontological perception about nonhuman world, beyond their subsistence roles? Ecofem.indi’s design is grounded in empirical and interdisciplinary research crosscutting the fields of environmental anthropology and gender to understand the dynamics of relations between women and nonhuman world. In order to answer the research questions, the project will use qualitative research methods of social anthropology in two indigenous communities in Amazons and Siberia with a participatory methodology.

Keywords: ecofeminism,environmenral anthropology,political ontology,gender,participatory research,indigenous people
Centre of Excellence for the Technologies of Gene and Cell Therapy (CTGCT)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Widening Participation and Strengthening the European Research Area
Programme: Widening participation and spreading excellence
Theme: Improved access to Excellence
Destination: Improved access to Excellence
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: Slovenia,Netherlands,Germany,United Kingdom
Call: Teaming for Excellence (HORIZON-WIDERA-2022-ACCESS-01-two-stage, 2022)
Start date: 2023-09-01
End date: 2029-08-31
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 14067762.5
EU funding (EUR): 14067762.5
Participants: 5
Project status: SIGNED

Scientific discoveries on mechanisms of biomedical processes and invention of technologies to repair disease-related genes or destroy cancer cells represent the foundation of an important pillar of personalized medicine. The new Centre of Excellence for the Technologies of Gene and Cell Therapy (CTGCT) will be the first Centre of Excellence in biomedicine in Slovenia and unique with an approach combining mammalian cell synthetic biology and immunology to develop novel technologies for the development of GCTs and cancer immunotherapy in the EU and beyond. The aim of CTGCT is to become one of the leaders in the interdisciplinary breakthrough science technologies for GCT and a model for international research excellence, industrial collaboration and public engagement. CTGCT will gain a competitive edge based on the vertical integration of the technologies for whose further development the foundations have been laid at the National Institute of Chemistry (SI), and with support of expertise and knowledge of the advanced partners University College London (UK), University Medical Centre Utrecht (NL), Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin (DE) and Technical University Dresden (DE). Supported by the involvement of clinicians and patient organizations, CTGCT will enable translation of research achievements into therapeutic applications, primarily neurological and rare genetic diseases and cancer immunotherapy, and establish a capacity to prepare the GMP clinical grade therapeutic reagents, which is currently a bottleneck to effective translation. By bridging gap in translation, CTGCT will facilite high impact of excellent research and innovation on health in Slovenia as well as in the West Balkans, East Europe and beyond. It will strengthen scientific capabilities and long-term collaborations with partners and others leading scientific institutions from abroad, as well as improve accessibility of the GCTs.

Keywords: gene therapy,neurological diseases,cancer immunoterapy,synthetic biology,translational medicine,good manufacturing practice,bioscience entrepreneurship,advanced therapeutic medicinal products