Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Cracking the Anterior Cingulate Code: Toward a Unified Theory of ACC Function (See-ACC)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: The Human Mind and Its Complexity
Panel description: Cognitive science, psychology, linguistics, theoretical philosophy
Countries involved: Belgium
Call: ERC Advanced Grant (ERC-2017-ADG, 2017)
Start date: 2019-07-01
End date: 2025-06-30
Duration (months): 72.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2380000.0
EU funding (EUR): 2380000.0
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

Anterior cingulate cortex is one of the largest riddles in cognitive neuroscience and presents a major challenge to mental health research. ACC dysfunction contributes to a wide spectrum of psychiatric and neurological disorders but no one knows what it actually does. Although more than a thousand papers are published about it each year, attempts to identify its function have been confounded by the fact that a multiplicity of tasks and events activate ACC, as if it were involved in everything. Recently, I proposed a theory that reconciles many of the complexities surrounding ACC. This holds that ACC selects and motivates high-level, temporally extended behaviors according to principles of hierarchical reinforcement learning. For example, on this view ACC would be responsible for initiating and sustaining a run up a steep mountain. I have instantiated this theory in two computational models that make explicit the theory's assumptions, while yielding testable predictions. In this project I will integrate the two computational models into a unified, biologically-realistic model of ACC function, which will be evaluated using mathematical techniques from non-linear dynamical systems analysis. I will then systematically test the unified model in a series of experiments involving functional magnetic resonance imaging, electroencephalography and psychopharmacology, in both healthy human subjects and patients. The establishment of a complete, formal account of ACC will fill an important gap in the cognitive neuroscience of cognitive control and decision making, strongly impact clinical practice, and be important for artificial intelligence and robotics research, which draws inspiration from brain-based mechanisms for cognitive control. The computational modelling work will also link high level, abstract processes associated with hierarchical reinforcement learning with low level cellular mechanisms, enabling the theory to be tested in animal models.

Keywords: anterior cingulate cortex,dopamine,cognitive control,reinforcement learning,cognitive,neuroscience,motivation,effort,prefrontal cortex
Revolutionary new quantum chemical software for molecular simulations (QCLAB)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Industrial Leadership
Programme: Information and Communication Technologies
Action type: SME instrument
Countries involved: Hungary
Call: Open Disruptive Innovation Scheme (H2020-SMEINST-2-2016-2017, 2017)
Start date: 2017-05-01
End date: 2019-09-30
Duration (months): 29.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1418125.0
EU funding (EUR): 985425.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

In the 2000s, the application of quantum chemistry became available to various industries due to the successful findings resulting from years of research. Nowadays several pharmaceuticals are using quantum chemical methods to develop medicine molecules by replacing difficult and expensive tests with simulation techniques, therefore making the development process more efficient, faster and more cost-effective. Quantum chemical methods require a huge computational demand, which is the biggest difficulty of its spread. According to the latest trend of computer studies the solution for the quantum chemistry calculations is the multi processor Graphic Processing Unit - GPU, which requires special programming models’ adaptation. The aim of the project is the establishment of a GPU-optimized Gauss based, efficient, parallel quantum chemical integrator module, which could solve one of the speed limitation of quantum chemistry calculations, the calculation of integrals. With our revolutionary product new R&D fields can be available, moreover pharmaceutical and manufacturing companies could significantly reduce the required time of the market launch, saving hundreds of millions of Euros, helping chemists find the perfect candidate with the perfect features and reducing the chance of molecules’ failing during further phases of the development. Currently, there is no computer software which has the required capacity. The complete software will be available as a licensed module for companies, which are seeking general quantum chemical software. With this module they are going to be able to execute specific calculations (e.g.: SCF, DFT, (RI)-MP2, CC, etc.) more efficiently than their competitors.

Keywords: quantum chemistry,pharmaceutical market,molecular simulation,software development
Social Energy Renovations: Maximizing social impact and boosting clean energy investments in the non-profit sector through de-risking, aggregation, and capacity building (SER)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Societal Challenges
Programme: Secure, clean and efficient energy
Theme: Reducing energy consumption and carbon foorpint by smart and sustainable use
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: Italy,Italy,Italy,Italy,Spain,Bulgaria,France
Call: Financing for energy efficiency investments - Smart Finance for Smart Buildings (H2020-LC-SC3-EE-2020-2, 2020)
Start date: 2021-05-01
End date: 2024-04-30
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1794422.5
EU funding (EUR): 1794422.5
Participants: 8
Project status: SIGNED

In Europe, the non-profit sector employs 28 million full-time workers engaged in education, research, housing, counselling, workforce training and other social activities. The sector remains underserved by the financial industry, making it challenging to obtain funding to undertake clean energy investments. SER brings together 7 organizations from 4 EU countries to maximise social impact by boosting clean energy investments in the non-profit sector. SER intends to design, set up, and implement an innovative de-risking financing mechanism that entails financing and technical standardisation, project aggregation, social impact assessment and credit enhancement. Under SER’s financing scheme, an ESCO raises low-cost long-term capital via a forfaiting contracts to a financing instrument coupled with a de-risking mechanism. Social enterprises gain access to affordable sustainable renovations, coupled with technical assistance, while investors gain access to secure, high impact investments aligned with ESG and impact investment criteria. SER is positioned to strengthen social enterprises and generate more than 500M in clean energy investments over the course of 5 years after the project, translating into nearly 9,000 jobs, 24,633 Co2 emissions saved per year and massive social impact involving energy poverty mitigation, improvements in social inequality, health, wellbeing, productivity, financial literacy, and overall social cohesion. The initial focus is on Italy, with further replication foreseen in Bulgaria and France, and exploratory efforts in Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland. SER Consortium represents an ideal mix of partners including a specialized lender, an ESCO, a financing and de-risking advisory, social impact experts, an energy agency and local replicators in Bulgaria and France. SER strengthens the non-profit sector – a key driver in achieving a just and fair clean energy transition and a post-COVID-19 recovery.

Keywords: de risking,credit enhancement,financing mechanisms,social impact,clean energy investments,energy efficiency,social enterprises,sustainable renovation,building renovation,renewable energy
Exhaust Gas Purification System (SulPure)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Industrial Leadership
Programme: Innovation in SMEs
Action type: SME instrument
Countries involved: Sweden,Switzerland
Call: SME instrument (H2020-EIC-SMEInst-2018-2020-3, 2019)
Start date: 2020-03-01
End date: 2022-12-31
Duration (months): 34.0
Total project cost (EUR): 3476997.5
EU funding (EUR): 2433898.25
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

The advent of international sea transport, which now carries over 90% of worldwide trade, has shaped an interconnected global economy, but at a cost to our planet’s ecosystem. Maritime transport annually emits >1 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), sulphur oxides (SOx) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), which are known to lead to significant health and environmental problems. Approximately 90% of city dwellers in Europe are exposed to pollutants at concentrations higher than the air quality levels deemed harmful to health. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has addressed these concerns by introducing regulations for the prevention of air pollution under Annex VI of the MARPOL Convention (known as IMO2020). This regulation has been adopted by 177 states. AnnexVI imposes a framework of mandatory limits on emissions of SOx and NOx and will come into effect in January 2020. As it is estimated that <1% of the worldwide fleet is currently operating within these regulatory limits for sulphur emissions for open ocean areas, there is a major need in the shipping market to provide a solution that is commercially feasible and can comply with the impending air emission regulations. DAPHNE has thus developed SulPure: an innovative exhaust gas purification system. SulPure is an all-in-one, ready to install, turnkey solution for the shipping industry that simultaneously removes both SOx and NOx pollutants from marine engine exhaust gas, which is an unparalleled feat in the gas cleaning industry. It is also easier to install and maintain than conventional systems and is cheaper than state-of-the-art scrubbers. By servicing only 32 ships (of the potential ~53 000 vessels) with SulPure by 2023, DAPHNE’s revenue will be EUR 63 million. Market and competitive analysis by the world’s largest classification society, DNV GL, and support letters from major European shipowners show that DAPHNE’s SulPure is the most attractive and competitive solution and attest to its potential.

Keywords: exhaust gas cleaning system,shipping emissions,imo environmental regulations,air pollution,sustainability
Streamline the european business environment with first class disruptive technology (OnceForAll)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Industrial Leadership
Programme: Information and Communication Technologies
Action type: SME instrument
Countries involved: France
Call: Open Disruptive Innovation Scheme (H2020-SMEINST-2-2016-2017, 2016)
Start date: 2016-08-01
End date: 2019-03-31
Duration (months): 32.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2130750.0
EU funding (EUR): 1491525.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

ALG is an innovative SME founded in 2010, builder of the Attestation Légale platform (http://www.attestationlegale.fr), currently in use by thousands of French businesses. The Attestation Légale platform is a Software as a Service (SaaS) Web application through which businesses can share their administrative documents and can benefit from alerts and always uptodate documents. Because of the future implementation of a European directive that reinforces the obligation of diligence in Europe (http:// www.lemoniteur.fr/165-commande-publique/article/actualite/23657764-bruxelles-adoption-definitive-des-directives-marchespublicset-concessions), our objective and our main motivation for this project proposal are to investigate the possibility of deploying our solution on a European scale. The deployment of such a solution will lead to the following outcomes: - Improvement of the competitiveness of European businesses by the administrative simplification accelerated by the European directive; - Better regulation in the context of worker secondment and contribute to the effort on countering unfair competition between multiple European Union businesses. These outcomes will also lead to the following impacts: - Usage disruption by eliminating the redundant processes and costs related to the diffusion and the collect of administrative documents; - Technological disruption by modeling and exploiting these Business-to-Business social networks while respecting the requirement of privacy and data property specific to businesses actors; - Data governance disruption by letting the members of our platform to remain the owner of the produced data. The objectives of this phase 1 are to identify the European countries in which our solution can be deployed. If such countries are found in phase 1, the phase 2 would enable us to either prototype or modify our current solution to support these countries and to let their businesses benefit from our solution.

Keywords: secured business network,legal profile,undeclared work
Social Participation for improving emotional, mental, and physical wellbeing in independently living older adults (DREAM)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie-Sklodowska-Curie Actions
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Research and innovation staff exchange
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Information Science and Engineering
Countries involved: Australia,Italy,Poland,Mongolia,Switzerland,Philippines,Costa Rica,Paraguay
Call: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) (H2020-MSCA-RISE-2015, 2015)
Start date: 2016-02-01
End date: 2019-01-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 931500.0
EU funding (EUR): 931500.0
Participants: 8
Project status: CLOSED

The combination of longer life expectancy, evolving socio-economical norms and conditions, and new technologies are dramatically changing life after retirement, and not always for the better. In more and more countries, pensioners find themselves with many years in front of them, some of them likely characterized by reduced physical and cognitive abilities. For older adults, this span of time out of the workforce was traditionally devoted to the role (and source of great joy) of caring for grandchildren. However, this role is fading out because of increased mobility of children, which often live far away for work, love, or other reasons, leading to an increase of loneliness and social isolation. This project aims at rethinking long life and understanding the socio-economical context that can make this period of life more exiting and attractive. The specific angle we take is that of enabling older adults of all ages - and specifically including adults who cannot leave their home or that have reduced cognitive abilities - to learn, grow, interact, and contribute to society through ICT. In other words, we aim at enabling adults to be contributors to societal wellbeing. We generically refer to this group of abilities as life participation abilities, and we focus on these aspects because studies tell us that the ability of interacting and feeling useful and helpful to others is essential to a person’s wellbeing, sometimes more so than health. The multi- and inter-disciplinary nature of the project provides the perfect environment for collaboration and knowledge transfer. As such, it requires the expertise and perspective that only the consortium as a whole can provide. The synergies that we build in the project will help not only in the materialization of the solutions starting from the original problems, challenges and requirements, but they will also foster the growth of research and innovation skills of the researchers and institutions involved in the project.

Keywords: social informatics,aging,emotional wellbeing,life participation,user studies
Synaptic integration in the ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus in aggressive behaviour (ZPVMH)

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: Life Sciences
Countries involved: United Kingdom,United Kingdom
Call: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF-EF) (H2020-MSCA-IF-2014, 2014)
Start date: 2015-06-01
End date: 2018-03-17
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 195454.81
EU funding (EUR): 195454.8
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

Generating appropriate behavioural responses to sensory cues is crucial to ensure the survival of species, and relies on synaptic integration – the process by which individual neurons convert synaptic input into action potential output. How the brain performs the computations that produce specific behaviours is an essential question in Neuroscience and has direct relevance to human health and well-being. The aim of this project is to determine mechanisms of synaptic integration in a circuit underlying aggressive behaviour in the mouse, and analyse how single neurons in the ventromedial hypothalamic nucleus (VMH) contribute to computations leading to aggressive behaviour. By combining behavioural, genetic, electrophysiological and optical techniques, this project will determine: (i) the biophysical properties and local connectivity of VMH neurons, (ii) the anatomical localization of synaptic inputs along their dendritic tree, and (iii) how VMH neurons that drive aggressive behaviour integrate synaptic input from anatomically and molecularly-defined pathways. Recent in vitro studies have uncovered a previously unknown degree of complexity of information processing that single neurons can perform. While a lot of these studies combining electrophysiological, optical and computational approaches have focused on cortical circuits important for learned behaviours, innate behaviours have not benefited from such experimental and analysis framework. This project will become the first to implement such multidisciplinary approach to determine the mechanisms of synaptic integration in the hypothalamus. The results of this study will provide mechanisms of how VMH neurons generate patterns of activity that lead to aggression, which will advance our understanding of information processing in fundamental innate circuits and contribute to development of solutions for control of aggressive behaviour.

Keywords: aggressive behaviour,hypothalamus,neuronal circuits,neuronal plasticity,synaptic integration,electrophysiology
Phon(t)on-induced phase transitions (Phonton)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Fundamental constituents of matter
Panel description: Particle, nuclear, plasma, atomic, molecular, gas, and optical physics
Countries involved: Germany
Call: ERC Consolidator Grant (ERC-2014-CoG, 2014)
Start date: 2015-09-01
End date: 2022-08-31
Duration (months): 84.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1486973.0
EU funding (EUR): 1486973.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

One of our dreams for the future is to control and manipulate complex materials and devices at will. This progress would revolutionize technology and influence many aspects of our everyday life. A promising direction is the control of material properties by electromagnetic radiation leading to photo-induced phase transitions. An example of such a transition is the reported dynamically induced superconductivity via a laser pulse. Whereas the theoretical description of the coupling of fermions to bosonic modes in equilibrium has seen enormous progress and explains highly non-trivial phenomena as the phonon-induced superconductivity, driven systems pose many puzzles. In addition to the inherent time-dependence of the external driving field, a multitude of possible excitation and relaxation mechanisms challenge the theoretical understanding. Recently in the field of quantum optics, a much cleaner realization of a photo-induced phase transition, the Dicke transition, has been observed for bosonic quantum gases loaded in an optical cavity. Above a critical pump strength of an external laser field, the ensemble undergoes a transition to an ordered phase. We aim to advance the general theoretical understanding of photo-induced phase transitions both in the field of solid state physics and quantum optics. In particular, we will focus on the design and investigation of photo-induced transitions to unconventional superconductivity and non-trivial topological phases. Our insights will be applied to fermonic quantum gases in optical cavities and solid state materials. In order to treat these systems efficiently, we will develop new variants of the numerical density matrix renormalization group (or also called matrix product state) methods and combine these with analytical approaches.

Keywords: interacting fermionic quantum gases,optical lattices,driven quantum many body systems,cavity qed
Long-term Investigation of Functional Excitatory Synapses: Linking Plasticity, Network Wiring and Memory Storage (LIFE synapses)

Framework: Horizon 2020 — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System
Panel description: Nervous system development, homeostasis and ageing, nervous system function and dysfunction, systems neuroscience and modelling, biological basis of cognitive processes and of behaviour, neurological and mental disorders
Countries involved: Germany
Call: ERC Starting Grant (ERC-2016-STG, 2016)
Start date: 2017-04-01
End date: 2022-09-30
Duration (months): 66.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1500000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The nature of the physical substrate of memory – or engram – is probably one of the longest studied mysteries in neuroscience, and yet it still remains elusive. In recent years, the search for the engram has gained new momentum due to the possibilities of optogenetic activation and silencing of specific neurons in the brain. Recent studies suggest that the engram could be defined as the subset of neurons that is necessary and sufficient to cause recall of a specific memory when activated. But where is the engram when the neurons are not active? Most likely, ‘lasting alterations’ during memory formation are encoded in synaptic connections, forming a specific circuit that is able to trigger memory recall when active. This raises the possibility that the engram could be encoded in a pattern of altered synapses, not a pattern of cell bodies. Long-lasting potentiation or depression of synaptic efficacy is thought to underlie learning and memory formation suggesting that the engram could be stored in the strength of synapses. Yet, most excitatory synapses in the brain are highly plastic and show pronounced morphological dynamics. It is therefore not clear to what extent engrams can be stored in a network of synapses and how functional and structural changes of individual synapses contribute to the engram. The central aim of this proposal is to identify synapses participating in the engram and to study their morphological stability and pre- and postsynaptic functional properties. With novel optogenetic approaches and molecular markers we will investigate functional synapses in their native circuit over the time scale of weeks. By connecting functional long-term analysis of single synapses with morphological observations the proposed project will fill a wide gap in our understanding of how synapses encode and store information. I anticipate that my work will transform our knowledge about the location and mechanism of memory storage in the brain.

Keywords: synapses,engram,hippocampus,information storage,synaptic wiring,synaptic plasticity,optogenetics,2 photon imaging