Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
ADvanced SOILs for the agritech R&D (ADSOILS)

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: Spain,France
Call: ERC PROOF OF CONCEPT GRANTS (ERC-2023-POC, 2023)
Start date: 2023-11-01
End date: 2025-04-30
Duration (months): 18.0
Total project cost (EUR): 150000.0
EU funding (EUR): 150000.0
Participants: 3
Project status: CLOSED

AdSoils project aims to evaluate, validate, and develop artificial advanced soil technology for its commercial exploitation as a tool for screening crops from belowground. As part of the Farm to Fork strategy, the European Commission aims at reduced “nutrient losses of at least 50% by 2030, while ensuring no deterioration in soil fertility. This is expected to lead to a reduction in fertiliser use of at least 20%”. The breeding and agrochemical sectors are now seeking ways for crops to acquire water and nutrient more efficiently, supplying seeds, compounds and inoculum that reduce soil contamination and make crops more resilient to climate change. Assessing the effectiveness of such strategies is a major bottleneck because current screening technologies are destructive costly and time consuming. Within the ERC consolidator grant 647857 “SENSOILs”, an artificial soil that becomes transparent during watering has been successfully developed. This technology, suited for small scale laboratory research, has shown great potential, enabling the discovery of new forms of mobility by soil bacteria and mapping root induced chemical gradients at microscale resolution. Adsoils project proposes to move a step further and to demonstrate that the AdSoils solution can be fabricated and applied in commercial screens for the discovery of agrochemicals and genomic regions involved in water and nutrient use efficiency. The project will identify cost-effective fabrication routes enabling a close mimic of natural soils and will produce a sufficient volume to validate the soil prototype with industrial end-users.
Development of Transverse Organic Thermoelectric Generators for Wearable Energy Harvesting: Generating in-plane Electricity From Through-Plane Heat Flow (t-OTEGs)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Postdoctoral Fellowships
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Information Science and Engineering
Countries involved: Belgium
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2025-05-01
End date: 2027-04-30
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 200400.0
EU funding (EUR): 200400.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

The rise of wearable electronics has driven the demand for innovative energy harvesting solutions that offer sustainable power without relying on bulky batteries. Organic thermoelectric generators (OTEGs), which convert temperature gradients (ΔT) from the body heat into electricity, are promising candidates due to their skin compatibility, flexibility, thinness, and biocompatibility. However, current OTEGs face challenges in being used as wearables because it is difficult to create a ΔT in response to body heat, which typically moves in a vertical direction. State-of-the art 3D OTEG designs addressing this issue often sacrifice the thinness, flexibility and durability—key strengths of traditional OTEGs for wearable applications. To overcome these challenges, we propose transverse OTEGs (t-OTEGs) that generate electricity perpendicular to the heat flow, retaining the inherent advantages of 2D thin-film OTEGs. The key of the t-OTEGs is an engineered dual-κ substrate, composed of materials with different thermal conductivities (κ), which creates a lateral ΔT from orthogonal heat flows, enabling efficient energy conversion in a 2D thin-film platform. The primary goal of this project is to develop wearable t-OTEG technologies that utilize a versatile 2D thin-film platform to harvest the heat emitted by human skin, making them practical for real-world wearable applications and effectively replacing already proposed wearable OTEGs. To achieve this, the research will focus on the development and optimization of the dual-κ substrate, the scalable design of t-OTEGs through advanced printing techniques, and their integration into wearable applications. Successfully completing this project will revolutionize OTEG technology, providing a scalable, sustainable, and flexible power solution for wearable electronics, setting new benchmarks in thermoelectric energy harvesting, and contributing to global sustainability efforts by reducing reliance on disposable batteries.

Keywords: thermoelectrics,wearables,organic electronics,functional composites,energy harvesting,heat flow
Assessing the impact of timely antenatal care on maternal and newborn health using a novel computational model (InTime)

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: Life Sciences
Countries involved: Finland,United States
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2025-09-01
End date: 2027-11-30
Duration (months): 27.0
Total project cost (EUR): 318564.3
EU funding (EUR): 318564.3
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

High quality antenatal care (ANC) can significantly reduce global maternal and newborn mortality. The World Health Organization (WHO) currently monitors the implementation of its new ANC model using the indicator of four or more ANC visits, but this approach has limitations, notably its failure to consider the timing of ANC interventions. Timing is critical, as many interventions are most effective when started early in pregnancy, which is often not the case in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) where women frequently initiate ANC late. InTime addresses this challenge by developing an innovative model based on evidence synthesis of randomised controlled trials on the impact of timing of key antenatal interventions on their effectiveness. The model integrates this data in the coverage of the interventions in 81 “Countdown to 2030 priority countries”, and further links it with health system readiness to deliver the modelled service, estimated using existing data from nationally representative health facility assessments in LMICs. For maximum impact, InTime implements the findings through a computational tool that has a world-wide coverage and is widely used by global organisations and governments to estimate the impact of scaling up maternal and child health interventions in LMICs. By quantifying the impact of untimely ANC on maternal and neonatal mortality in Countdown to 2030 priority countries, and making this data freely available globally, InTime will assist health policy makers and programme implementers in LMICs to analyse the quality and equity of ANC, locate ANC implementation bottlenecks, evaluate the effectiveness of new innovations for delivering ANC, and target valuable resources to where they are needed most, thus ultimately contributing to saving lives. The results will be broadly communicated through open access and open peer reviewed articles, and targeted high-level consultations with health policy makers, including WHO and the World Bank.

Keywords: antenatal care anc,global health,quality of care,impact estimation,computational modeling,low and middle income countries lmic,maternal mortality,neonatal mortality
Integrating Spectral and Geometric data on Moduli Space (InSpeGMos)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Mathematics
Panel description: All areas of mathematics, pure and applied, plus mathematical foundations of computer science, mathematical physics and statistics
Countries involved: France
Call: ERC ADVANCED GRANTS (ERC-2022-ADG, 2022)
Start date: 2023-09-01
End date: 2028-08-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1686575.0
EU funding (EUR): 1686575.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Each physical object possesses specific frequencies of vibrations, called its “eigenfrequencies”, at which it enters in resonance under an external stimulus. In mathematical terms these frequencies are the “eigenvalues” of a linear operator; they form the “spectrum” of the object. Spectral geometry is concerned with understanding how the spectrum of an object, as well as the modes of vibration (eigenfunctions) associated to each eigenfrequency, are related to its geometric shape. This is a wide area of research, with applied and interdisciplinary aspects (electromagnetic waves, vibrating solids, seismic waves, wave functions in quantum mechanics... ), but also involving very theoretical mathematics, with many natural questions still open: What can we learn about the topology or geometry of an object by observing its spectrum? Can we predict if the vibrations will be localized in a small part of the object or on the contrary, if they will take place everywhere ? Can we construct an object and be sure that certain frequencies are in the spectrum, or, on the opposite, be sure to avoid certain sets of frequencies ? Can there be objects of arbitrarily large size, with no small eigenfrequencies ? Project InSpeGMoS deals with a specific mathematical model : hyperbolic surfaces. The Moduli Space is a space of parameters of these surfaces that we can tune, and observe how the geometry and the spectrum vary. In the semiclassical regime (when the wavelength is small compared to the size of the object), it is expected that certain spectral features are universal. We will adopt a probabilistic point of view: try to exhibit spectral and geometric phenomena that happen in 99$% of cases. The project is focussed on developing new integration techniques on Moduli Space. We shall look for new coordinates, generalize Mirzakhani’s study of volume functions, and seek inspiration in Random Graph Theory to develop new probabilistic methods in the spectral theory of random surfaces.

Keywords: random geometry,spectral theory on manifolds,teichm ller theory
The art of navigating social interactions: capturing social anxiety where it matters most (SocialDynamics)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: The Human Mind and Its Compl exity
Panel description: Cognitive science, psychology, linguistics
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2024-STG, 2024)
Start date: 2025-06-01
End date: 2030-05-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1499978.0
EU funding (EUR): 1499978.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Social anxiety (SA) has a profound impact on social functioning, but there is limited understanding of how SA individuals navigate the challenges of everyday social situations. These challenges consist of deciding how to communicate with others and how to regulate emotions evoked by those interactions, often under time-pressure and swiftly changing demands. Yet, the field has largely neglected the dynamic and socially interactive character of the challenges faced by SA individuals. This project builds on my conceptual innovation: SA should be studied where it matters most, during dynamic social interactions, considering emotion regulation decisions. It also builds on my methodological expertise: measuring neural dynamics during communication. These innovative backgrounds allow me to now develop a new neurocognitive framework for understanding the challenges SA individuals face when dealing with the communicative and emotional demands of social interactions. I will test how SA pairs solve communicative problems under evaluative pressure, while brain activity in each pair is simultaneously measured (WP1). I will use advanced methods to quantify of how pairs use their shared history to explore novel solutions to the communicative challenge. Further, I will identify neural systems supporting the selection of strategies to regulate emotions evoked by social stimuli (WP2). Casting emotion regulation as a dynamic decision-making problem between regulatory strategies moves the field beyond current SA research on the (in)ability to execute a single strategy. Finally, I will test whether difficulties to flexibly deal with communicative (WP1) and emotion regulation (WP2) demands in social settings can be explained by rigidity to adjust behaviour in unpredictable environments (WP3). Explaining the social challenges that SA individuals face in daily live will move the field beyond traditional approaches unable to capture the dynamics of typically changing social situations.

Keywords: social anxiety,neuroimaging,human communication,social interaction,emotion regulation flexibility,fmri hyperscanning,eeg
Translational Control of Neuronal Fate and Identity (TransNeuroFate)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator 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 – In humans and all other organisms
Countries involved: France
Call: ERC CONSOLIDATOR GRANTS (ERC-2021-COG, 2021)
Start date: 2023-01-01
End date: 2027-12-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2000000.0
EU funding (EUR): 2000000.0
Participants: 3
Project status: SIGNED

The cerebral cortex is a central structure of the mammalian brain, characterized by a remarkable diversity of neuronal types. Understanding the origin of the extraordinary neuronal diversity is fundamental to understand how cortical architecture and functions emerge during development and remains a critical challenge in cellular and molecular neurobiology. While the efforts have been focused on transcriptional control, evidence for regulation at the translational level is emerging. I hypothesize that translational control, albeit overlooked, acts in a combinatorial fashion with transcriptional induction to regulate gene expression programs during cortical patterning. I have demonstrated an intimate functional link between cortical development and pools of mature transfer RNA (tRNAs), the major determinant of translation. I, therefore, propose to address how translational control, through the modulation of the availability of mature translationally competent tRNAs, fine-tunes gene expression programs during lineage progression, thereby regulating neuronal diversity. Studying this yet unexplored question should unravel a hitherto unrecognized level of neuronal fate identity determination in the cerebral cortex. We will combine ribosome profiling, mRNA and tRNA deep sequencing, screening of genetic perturbation and gene manipulation in vivo in the mouse embryonic cortex to i) uncover the specific translational programs that influence neuronal lineages progression; ii) determine how tRNA repertoires (both at the transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels) are shaped to meet the specific translational needs of different cell types during corticogenesis and iii) validate the functional importance of fluctuation in mature tRNA content during cortical development. This project should bring conceptual advances in the understanding of brain development mechanisms that could be instrumental to interpret the pathological mechanisms of neurodevelopmental disorders.

Keywords: cortical neurogenesis,neuronal diversity,transcriptional priming,translational control,trnas
Alternative gene ends: the crosstalk of RNA cleavage and transcription termination (AlternativeEnds)

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: Poland
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2021-STG, 2021)
Start date: 2022-10-01
End date: 2027-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1493850.0
EU funding (EUR): 1493850.0
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

The human genome contains only ~20.000 genes, however, most of them encode multiple transcripts resulting from alternative promoter usage, splicing, and 3’ end selection. Gene 3’ ends can be defined by the positions of RNA 3’ cleavage, or the location where RNA polymerase II terminates transcription. Alternative 3’ ends determine the properties of the encoded protein: typically its abundance, but sometimes also domain structure – as for immunoglobulin M heavy chain which is membrane-bound or secreted depending on the 3’ cleavage site. Widespread changes in 3’ end usage are characteristic of many processes e.g. differentiation and cancer like neuroblastoma. We do not understand what drives this selectivity. In this research project I will answer the fundamental question of how the location and timing of RNA polymerase II entering into termination mode impacts on the choice of the alternative cleavage and polyadenylation site (Aim 1). I will use biochemical and genetic approaches to elucidate the sequence determinant of alternative cleavage and termination (Aim 2), and investigate sequence-independent components of alternative termination (Aim 3). I recently pioneered the measurement of 3’ cleavage positions together with locations of transcription termination by a novel transcriptomic method. I will apply this method to investigate the timing of changes in cleavage and termination relative to each other on an averaged cell population level, and use a new technique to test this for single molecules. I will also determine the baseline for cleavage site selection utilizing a newly developed in vitro system. Combining those unique integrative and separation-of-function approaches will yield a comprehensive view of alternative gene end regulation. Ultimately, understanding the complex crosstalk between RNA cleavage and transcription termination in alternative 3’ end selection will enable the manipulation of this process e.g. to alleviate diseases such as neuroblastoma.

Keywords: transcription termination,pre mrna 3 processing,alternative polyadenylation,rna polymerase ii,pausing,human,mammalian,transcription,chromatin
Breaking the barrier - An integrated multidisciplinary approach to kill Gram-negative bacteria through existing antibiotics by making their outer membrane permeable (BREAKthrough)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
Theme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Destination: Doctoral Networks
Action type: Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions
Panel: Life Sciences
Countries involved: Belgium,France,Switzerland,Spain,United Kingdom,Italy,Slovenia,Netherlands,Australia
Call: MSCA Doctoral Networks 2021 (HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01, 2021)
Start date: 2023-01-01
End date: 2027-09-30
Duration (months): 57.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2735675.66
EU funding (EUR): 2618488.8
Participants: 20
Project status: SIGNED

Antimicrobial resistance, which is caused by multi-drug-resistant bacterial pathogens is a global health emergency. Gram-negative bacteria (GNB) notably hinder effective treatment because of their impermeable outer membrane (OM). Consequently, many standard-of-care (SOC) antibiotics cannot access intracellular targets in GNB. The objective of the BREAKthrough European Training Network (ETN) is to sensitise GNB to these antibiotics by making their OM permeable. To this end, we will develop inhibitors of three protein machineries that are responsible for OM maintenance. Importantly, many known antibacterial agents have characteristics different from drugs that are directed against targets in mammalian cells. To define better rules for antibacterial drug development a data hub will be created to assemble information on the physico-chemical characteristics of molecules that can pass the OM. To achieve these goals, a multi-disciplinary academic-industrial consortium has been assembled with organic chemists, computational chemists and specialists in high-throughput drug screening, zebrafish infection models, bacterial morphogenesis and the molecular biology of the three targets. The expected outcomes of the BREAKthrough ETN include (i) the development of new chemical space rules for drugs that need to cross the OM, (ii) the discovery of new inhibitors that interfere with OM maintenance to overcome the insensitivity of Gram-negative pathogenic bacteria towards SOC antibiotics and (iii) providing 10 Early Stage Researchers with scientific, technical, business and transferable skills to become professional drug developers with a keen eye for the hurdles in the development of these drugs in an industrial context.

Keywords: bacterial outer membrane,gram negative bacteria,bam,lpt,lipopolysaccharide,ld transpeptidases,zebrafish infection model,peptidoglycan,antimicrobial,potentiator
Colonialism and translation in travel writing: Depicting otherness (DEPICTNESS)

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: Estonia
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2023 (HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01, 2023)
Start date: 2025-03-01
End date: 2027-02-28
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 151901.76
EU funding (EUR): 151901.76
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Given colonial and imperial backgrounds on the history of many of the European powers, different geographical displacements and the lack of proper representation the Black community, and people of colour (PoC), are historically portrayed in a sarcastic, humorous and racist fashion in European textual and visual repertoire. One would assume that the traditions perpetuated by colonial powers in representation of otherness would be replicated in imperialist countries, but these attributes can also be seen in countries that have no slavery or colonial past. DEPICTNESS is an interdisciplinary postdoctoral project that lays in the in-between place of Translation studies and Semiotic studies (not to mention other relevant fields as Travel Writing and Comparative Literature). One of DEPICTNESS objectives is to analyse the works of Hergé (Belgian cartoonist) and Gori (Estonian caricaturist). Chosen images of both artists’ PoC characters will form the visual selection, while the phrases using petit nègre in the Hergé collection and its translations in Portuguese, Galician, English and Estonian will form the textual selection. Both selections will be analysed and compared to see how differently white and PoC characters are portrayed textually and visually by both artists; for the visual selection a Semiotics approach will be used, while for the verbal selection a postcolonial methodology applied to translation studies will analyse the implications of being described by an accent. Concerning this selection and the artists’ production, founded on Travel Writing theory, another objective of DEPICTNESS is to coin a travel writer category called the static traveller taking in consideration the analytical corpus of the project. The multi-comparative approach of DEPICTNESS plot imagery and textual selection in order to explore the representations made by Gori and Hergé.

Keywords: translation studies tintin gori