Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Evolution on the Nile: Faunal Regionalization and Continuity in the Pleistocene of Sudan (PALEONILE)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Earth System Science
Panel description: Physical geography, geo logy, geophysics, atmospheric sciences, oceanography, climatology, cryology, ecology, global environmental change, biogeochemical cycles, natural resources management
Countries involved: Germany
Call: ERC CONSOLIDATOR GRANTS (ERC-2021-COG, 2021)
Start date: 2022-12-01
End date: 2027-11-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1999515.0
EU funding (EUR): 1999515.0
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

Over a century of paleontological investigation in Africa has revealed a rich Pleistocene fossil record that includes the evolution of hominins and their material cultures. However, the vast majority of fossil sites are located in the East African Rift Valley (EARV), and our knowledge is heavily skewed by this geographic bias. Poor continental geographic sampling means we lack an understanding of faunal regional variations, and the role of dispersal and geographic variation in the emergence of modern ecosystems. Furthermore, many have questioned the role of the Nile, the longest river in the world, in promoting faunal and cultural dispersal between Subsaharan and North Africa, and beyond to Eurasia. For decades such questions have been answered speculatively, with little data to stand on. PALEONILE is an ambitious project that will address these major gaps in our knowledge through large-scale surveys to reveal a new fossil record from the Middle Nile River Basin in Sudan. This project will test an overarching hypothesis of Pleistocene zoogeographic regionalization in the Nile Basin with respect to the EARV and surrounding areas, and will use an interdisciplinary array of paleontological, geological, geochronological, and archaeological approaches to reach its objectives. The geographic scale of the project is large and the techniques are cutting edge, including high-risk experimental methodologies such as paleobiomolecular recovery and new developments in sedimentary dating. PALEONILE forms the first ever large-scale systematic paleontological project to be conducted in Sudan, where the Cenozoic fossil record remains largely undiscovered, and its potential overlooked. PALEONILE will generate a new paradigm of zoogeographic dynamics and evolution in the African Pleistocene that represents a new synthesis of hydrographic, phylogenomic, archaeological, and paleontological evidence.
Functional Nanoscale Therapeutics (FunctionalNanoTher)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Prevention,  Diagnosis and T reatment of Human Diseases
Panel description: Medical technologies  and tools for prevention, diagnosis and treatment of human diseases, therapeutic approaches and interventions , pharmacology, preventative  medicine, epidemiology and public health , digital medicine
Countries involved: Ireland
Call: ERC ADVANCED GRANTS (ERC-2022-ADG, 2022)
Start date: 2024-01-01
End date: 2028-12-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2499796.0
EU funding (EUR): 2499796.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

We will develop new functional nanoscale medicines that engage and co-operate with cellular pathways that were designed to process and extract useful information from endogenous nanostructures, as well as protect the organism from nanoscale pathogens. We show how functional hybrid nanostructures, part-synthetic and part-cell-derived biomolecular condensate, elicit the full repertoire of cellular processing steps. In particular the enabling of highly efficient escape from endosomes and providing intracellular access to nanostructure embedded biomolecular networks. We show how cellular defences include nanoscale molecular interaction gating mechanisms that grant access on the formation of prescribed molecular assemblies that act as ‘access key codes’. The assembled molecular interactions at these gates may be captured and analysed using time-resolved spatially localized chemical reactions within the cell, and the enabling assemblies analysed in molecular detail. The cell-derived condensate portion of the hybrid particles may be re-engineered to incorporate foreign proteins and RNAs, while retaining overall function, and the new biomolecules can then be delivered to intracellular locations with their function intact. These advances make it possible to understand the connection between nanostructure architecture and function, and thereby open the pathway to recapitulate the functional nanostructures using purely preparative methods. To apply these systems we first propose to use functional nanostructures to deliver specifically optimised mRNA for Covid-19 spike protein into the cell, optimising mRNA metabolism to benefit from endogenous intracellular access. We then propose to engineer and deliver cooperative networks of multiple mRNA, with the prospect of being able to develop functional nanoscale therapies that can counter more extended dysfunctional networks such as those found in the tumour microenvironment.
Untangling population representations of objects. A closed loop approach to link neural activity to mouse behavior. (NEURACT)

Framework: Horizon Europe — 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 – In humans and all other organisms
Countries involved: Greece
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2022-STG, 2022)
Start date: 2023-03-01
End date: 2028-02-29
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1900000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1900000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

A paramount component of intelligence is our ability to extract useful information in the world through our sensory observations. Object recognition is a fundamental problem in visual perception: every day we depend on our ability to identify objects in our visual environment, and our brain is capable of accomplishing it effortlessly and in a fraction of a second, in spite of immense variation in the sensory information that arrives in our retinas. Understanding the algorithm that the brain uses to do this complex task is a decisive conquest in neuroscience but in order to understand ethologically relevant visual processing, we need to understand how it drives behavior. Despite significant progress characterizing visual processing, we do not understand how the visual system solves visual inference problems in natural environments and we are still far from having a complete understanding of how the brain creates untangled transformation-invariant object representations in the perceptual/visual domain, that can subsequently be used to guide behavior. The proposed research effort aims to (i) create a state-of-the-art behavioral virtual navigation system for mice, (ii) combine it with recent advanced functional brain recording techniques and sophisticated neural data analysis to study how objects are represented in the activity of large populations of neurons across the visual hierarchy and beyond and (iii) causally relate these representations to the behavior of the animal. The outcomes of this project will provide significant insights into the computations used by the mouse visual cortex to extract relevant features from the environment, identify how distinct features are represented across the mouse visual areas and how in turn these representations guide the behavior of the animals.

Keywords: object recognition,object manifold,mouse model,visual discrimination task,visual processing,conceptual representation,continual learning
Altered brain-periphery crosstalk as a key pathomechanism for high-risk phenotypes in humans (CrossPeriBrain)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Physiology in Health, Disease and Ageing
Panel description: Organ and tissue physiology, comparative physiology, physiology  of ageing , pathophysiology, inter - organ and tissue communication, endocrinology, nutrition,  metabolism, interaction with the microbiome, non -communicable diseases including cancer (and except disorders of the nervous system  and immunity -related diseases)
Countries involved: Germany
Call: ERC CONSOLIDATOR GRANTS (ERC-2023-COG, 2023)
Start date: 2024-06-01
End date: 2029-05-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1999838.0
EU funding (EUR): 1999838.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Diabetes is a leading cause for morbidity and mortality worldwide. In our fight against the diabetes pandemic, my team and I recently identified subgroups of humans that are predictive for future life-threatening complications even before diabetes onset. Classification into these new risk groups is currently purely based on extensive phenotyping, yet, the underlying mechanisms are unclear. Of note, phenotypes of very high-risk persons are highly reminiscent of those from subjects with altered periphery-brain communication. I will combine ground-breaking experimental research in humans with latest data analysis approaches to delineate the causal relationship between altered brain-periphery communication and very high-risk phenotypes. The 1st aim will reveal disturbances in the brain-periphery communication in high-risk persons. I will identify differences in the transduction of neuronal signals to the target organs, discover regulators from the brain to the periphery, and elucidate the regulation of underlying pathways. The 2nd aim will clarify signalling from the periphery to the brain. I will unravel the dynamic interaction between insulin and gut-derived hormones on the brain, identify signalling patterns that inform the brain about food intake and determine disturbances thereof in high-risk persons, and I will non-invasively characterize postprandial molecular responses in neurons. The 3rd aim develops a novel, non-invasive approach to identify high-risk persons by their altered brain-periphery communication. It will apply the above-generated knowledge to develop an algorithm-based integration of health data. Ultimately, my project will innovatively define the impact of altered brain-periphery crosstalk in the development of clinically relevant high-risk groups. It will set ground for novel approaches that optimize prevention and treatment of major complications and thereby improve future health, way beyond what is achieved by current approaches.
Mechanism of facilitated homology search and the logic of its meiotic regulations (Homologic)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator 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 CONSOLIDATOR GRANTS (ERC-2024-COG, 2024)
Start date: 2025-04-01
End date: 2030-03-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1999999.0
EU funding (EUR): 1999999.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

DNA double-strand breaks (DSB) repair by homologous recombination (HR) entails identification of an intact homologous template DNA molecule in the genome. Homology search is guided by the DSB-flanking ssDNA sequence assembled into a RecA-family nucleoprotein filament (NPF). A biased version of this process, regulated in an ill-defined manner by chromosomes’ structure and meiosis-specific HR proteins, also underlies homolog recognition and recombination during meiosis I in most examined eukaryotes. Despite its centrality for genome maintenance and sexual reproduction, how homology search operates in cells and the nature of its meiotic regulations are largely unknown. Our goal is to solve these two major biological conundrums with a simple idea: that substrate properties (chromatin composition and motion) provide cues for search simplification and regulation. First, we will address the existence of a homology search facilitation mechanism based on combined (i) DNA occlusion by nucleosome and (ii) seeding of homology search by pioneer transcription factors (WP1). These insights will be applied to accelerate yeast evolution and improve gene-editing. Second, we will address how uncoordinated movements of semi-rigid meiotic chromosomes can generate mechanical cues underlying HR regulations that result in patterned recombination between homologs (WP2). The experimental strategy will involve extensive genetic engineering and large synthetic chromosomal regions for targeted alteration of chromatin composition, chromosome physical properties and chromosome motion in cis. Novel genomic and molecular approaches we developed to directly detect transient HR intermediates in yeast make this project uniquely feasible. This work should elucidate enigmatic interplays between chromosome biology and conserved DNA metabolic processes in mitosis and meiosis, broadens the current paradigm of facilitated target search by proteins in DNA, and yield tools of broad biotechnological interest.

Keywords: dna recombination meiosis chromosome
Clinical Trials Community Africa Network (CTCAN)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Health
Theme: Public-private partnerships
Destination: Global Health EDCTP3
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Partnership: EDCTP3 (JU-JTI)
Countries involved: South Africa,United States,Belgium,United Kingdom,France,Spain
Call: Creating a sustainable clinical trial network for infectious diseases in sub-Saharan Africa (HORIZON-JU-GH-EDCTP3-2022-01, 2022)
Start date: 2023-05-01
End date: 2025-10-31
Duration (months): 30.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2544887.38
EU funding (EUR): 1155462.5
Participants: 9
Project status: SIGNED

With over 25% of the global disease burden, only 3% of global clinical trials occur in Africa. This disproportion is driven by inadequacies in clinical research capacity, regulatory process ambiguity, deficient regional patient and disease area data, and lack of visibility of existing clinical research capabilities in Africa. To address this disproportion, this proposal seeks to establish the Clinical Trials Community Africa Network (CTCAN), a collaborative framework of key clinical research stakeholders in the African region, pharma partners, and other relevant international stakeholders, with the overarching goal of bringing more clinical trials to the region in a sustainable and coordinated manner. This collaboration will map and draw on the experience and expertise of already existing networks and initiatives. It will create a network of subnetworks that will foster coordination in clinical research, by ensuring and encouraging alignment in disease area prioritization, raising awareness and visibility of existing capacity from sites and labs across Africa, operationalising the regulatory processes across the region, and strengthen less experienced sites and labs through a clinical trial preparedness framework, while encouraging inter- and cross-continental knowledge and expertise sharing. CTCAN will use and expand the Clinical Trials Community (CTC) platform, an electronic platform consolidating data on researchers, regulations, sites, and epidemiology across the continent. The result will be an ever-present and ready-to-go pool of clinical research sites and labs with the agility to rapidly address new and emerging global health threats, epidemics, and pandemics, thereby efficiently contributing towards clinical research in pandemic preparedness. CTCAN will lay the foundation for a sustainable network of clinical trial sites and laboratories in sub-Saharan Africa by leveraging and initiating collaboration between existing sub-networks, funders, and pharma.

Keywords: capacity development,epidemiology data,clinical trial regulatory requirements,clinical trials networks
Water Efficient Allocation in a Central Asian Transboundary River Basin (WE-ACT)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment
Theme: Bio-Environment
Destination: Land, ocean and water for climate action
Action type: Innovation actions
Countries involved: Germany,Switzerland,Kyrgyzstan,United Kingdom,Netherlands,Sri Lanka,Spain,Belgium,Serbia
Call: Climate sensitive water allocation systems and economic instruments. (HORIZON-CL6-2022-CLIMATE-01, 2022)
Start date: 2023-01-01
End date: 2026-12-31
Duration (months): 48.0
Total project cost (EUR): 5299363.73
EU funding (EUR): 4643196.24
Participants: 15
Project status: SIGNED

Mountainous regions in Central Asia are vulnerable to consequences of climate change. Taking appropriate decisions for allocation of water over communities, the environment and key economic sectors such as agriculture and energy, is increasingly challenging due to economic and population growth as well as climate-induced changes in hydrological regimes in Central Asia’s main transboundary river basins. WE-ACT proposes to establish a climate sensitive Decision Support System for water allocation in two sub-catchments of a transboundary river basin in Central Asia, namely the Naryn and Kara Darya catchments of the Syr Darya river basin (covering parts of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan). Based on an innovative water information system that captures a thorough understanding of water availability, demand, footprint and allocation in a glacier-fed river basin, WE-ACT will enable water managers to interact with an accessible and intuitive DSS to alleviate water stress for communities, the economy and the environment on the short- and long-term. WE-ACT will enable them to adapt the allocation of water resources to the known and expected effects of climate change, while encouraging the improvement of policies to correctly set water tariffs, reduce water footprints and increase water use efficiency in agriculture and energy sectors. The backbone of the project is a reliable data supply chain based on real-time monitoring, integrated water demand-, availability- and use modelling approach, machine-learning, and data storage in a transboundary context. This will be matched with an in-depth understanding of water policies and priorities that face increasing pressures of climate change, growing demand and water dependency. End-users of the project (hydrometeorological stations, integrated models, DSS for water allocation) will be carefully mapped, invited, involved and trained to establish and use meaningful results from the outset of the project.
TRASDEJ - Transatlantic alliances between sexual dissidents for environmental justice (TRASDEJ)

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: Germany,Mexico
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2023 (HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01, 2023)
Start date: 2024-07-01
End date: 2027-06-30
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 214441.44
EU funding (EUR): 214441.44
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

The research “TRASDEJ- Transatlantic alliances betweenThe research “TRASDEJ- Transatlantic alliances between sexual dissidents for environmental justice” focuses on explore, analyze, and create horizontal bridges between the multiple political spaces of struggle for environmental justice from the indigenous sexual-dissidents in the south of Mexico and dynamic spaces of queer struggles, Berlin and rural communities against coal mines, in Germany. It addresses the question: Which socio-environmental strategies can be observed among indigenous sex-gender dissidents from southern Mexico for the defense of their territories and European queer activists for environmental justice? Following this question and using a critical ethnography methodology, TRASDEJ focuses on concrete and local life experience from sex-gender diverse actors for environmental justice across the Atlantic Ocean. The research deploys a mixed methods approach: narrative interviews; auto-ethnography; focus groups as well as Knowledge Exchange Workshops (KEW) with a combined format mixing face-to-face and digital encounters. The proposal makes use of post-colonial, intersectional and non-binary gender approaches to analyze and make visible the strategies from sex-gender dissidents inside the socio-environmental struggles in Germany and southern Mexico. TRASDEJ aims at providing face-to-face and digital platforms for exchange experience of resistance, vulnerabilities, and social struggles between indigenous sexual dissidents in the south of Mexico and queer European activists. It will also create spaces for exchange of experiences and identify the differences, similarities and potential bridges for the study of sexualities and international collaborations between subaltern groups for environmental justice.

Keywords: environmental climate crisis,sex gender dissidents,contemporary mayans,queer ecology,post colonialisms