Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Advanced X-ray Energy-sensitive Microscopy for Virtual Histology (AXES.Histo)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Consolidator 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: Sweden
Call: ERC CONSOLIDATOR GRANTS (ERC-2022-COG, 2022)
Start date: 2023-05-01
End date: 2028-04-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2000000.0
EU funding (EUR): 2000000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

In the last 20 years, phase-contrast x-ray imaging has evolved from first proof-of-principle experiments with relatively poor contrast, to a mature research field with many branches. Standing on the shoulders of scientific achievements and technological development, the time has come where virtual histology for biomedical applications is within reach. The aim of this research project is to design and construct a prototype x-ray microscope for three-dimensional histology. In the clinics we are used to non-invasive three-dimensional image modalities such as e.g. computed tomography (CT), ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The ability to visualise and track structures through a volume is extremely valuable for the purpose of diagnosis. But for microscopy of tissue biopsies, our golden standard is histological procedures involving thin slicing of the tissue before imaging in a microscope, rendering volumetric interpretation very difficult of not impossible. With the proposed phase-contrast micro-CT scanner, tissue samples can be imaged in three dimensions such that the computer rendering of the sample can be sliced in any arbitrary plane, and we have the possibility of volumetric data analysis. In this fashion, useful volumetric information can be extracted for various applications in biomedical research. As a direct application, we will use this 3D Histology setup to obtain detailed volumetric understanding of the development of lung lesions, and complement with gold standard microscopy techniques. A lab-based setup for virtual histology will allow full studies of disease pathologies with statistical significance and make optimisation of experimental protocols possible. For achieve the goal of soft tissue micro-CT, we will implement a novel inverse-geometry single-grating interferometer. When combined with state-of-the-art detector and source technology a scanner for high-resolution phase-contrast tomography of soft tissue will be realised.

Keywords: x ray wave propagation x ray phase contrast imaging 3d histology
Molecular Quantum Heat Engines (MOUNTAIN)

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: Belgium
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2021-STG, 2021)
Start date: 2022-05-01
End date: 2027-04-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1771875.0
EU funding (EUR): 1771875.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Heat engines are an integral part of our daily lives. They power cars or produce electricity by converting heat into work. Increasing their efficiency is very difficult and only marginal improvements have been achieved over the last decades. Thus, to reach the ambitious climate goals, it is necessary to go beyond conventional technologies. Atom-sized systems where quantum mechanical effects come into play could enable this: theory predicts that their efficiency can be boosted beyond the classical limits imposed by thermodynamics. However, so far, this has not been tested in practice due to a lack of suitable model systems. I propose to build a molecular heat engine of only a few atoms in size, with such high control over its structure and properties that these predictions can finally be tested. The engine's quantum properties will be robust at experimentally accessible temperatures, its coupling to the environment will be controllable, and electrical transport through it will be quantum coherent. I seek to exploit the full gamut of their physical properties to boost efficiency, including spin entropy and vibrational coupling. Practically, I will 1) implement a scanning probe setup into a dilution refrigerator, 2) fabricate single-molecule junctions with micro-heaters and ultra-sensitive superconducting thermometers, and 3) perform and interpret caloric experiments on single molecules at unprecedented precision. The results will teach us about the fundamental properties of atom-scale quantum systems and heat flowing through single molecules. It will inspire new ways to increase the performance of thermoelectric applications such as waste heat harvesters, nanoscale spot-cooling devices, or even thermal rectifiers and transistors. I am one of the forerunners in molecular thermoelectrics, with extensive hands-on experience in material sciences, nanotechnology, and mesoscopic physics. This multidisciplinary background is needed to make this ambitious project a success.

Keywords: single molecule electronics,thermoelectric effects,heat transport
Co-option of host circadian rhythms in cancer (INN-TIME)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting 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: Spain
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2023-STG, 2023)
Start date: 2024-03-01
End date: 2029-02-28
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1500000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Circadian rhythms (CRs) are the biological response to the periodic rotations of the Earth, and allow fundamental adaptations of organisms to a changing environment. CRs are molecularly controlled in every cell by a set of transcriptional factors that control, and are influenced by, core biological processes including metabolic, immune, and proliferative. My previous studies established, for the first time, that innate immune cells regulate the circadian physiology of tissues, including the susceptibility of the lung to be metastasized. In INN-TIME, I ask the reciprocal question to reveal if tumors take advantage of, and subvert, CRs of the innate (immune and stroma) compartments to escape anti-tumoral defense. INN-TIME Aims to understand how oncogenic processes rewire CRs of the host and to elucidate strategies that halt this subversion as a new approach to fight cancer. Using lung cancer as proof-of-principle, I will first investigate cell-intrinsic circadian programs in tumors (Aim1). Next, I will define how tumors co-opt circadian clocks of the host and explore how the molecular clock of innate immune (Aim2) and supporting stromal cells (Aim3) impacts tumor growth, both molecularly and functionally. By integrating multiple transcriptomics and functional approaches, INN-TIME will discover novel regulatory programs in tumors using a circadian approach, and pave the way to design strategies to prevent cancer by interfering with tumor-supportive circadian programs. INN-TIME will revolutionize the way we understand cancer, as it will identify the malignant roots of circadian rhythms and their impact on host defense. This research will establish a new paradigm by revealing the mechanisms underlying pro-tumorigenic clocks, and will provide robust foundations for new therapies in a set of disorders in which circadian clock (dys)functions are implicated.

Keywords: circadian rhythms,innate immunity,lung cancer
Augmenting participation, co-creation, trust and transparency in Deliberative Democracy at all scales (ORBIS)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Culture, creativity and inclusive society
Theme: Culture, creativity and inclusive society
Destination: Innovative Research on Democracy and Governance
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Italy,Greece,Switzerland,United Kingdom,France,Belgium,Luxembourg,Cyprus
Call: The future of democracy and civic participation (HORIZON-CL2-2022-DEMOCRACY-01, 2022)
Start date: 2023-02-01
End date: 2026-01-31
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 2498882.5
EU funding (EUR): 2498882.5
Participants: 16
Project status: SIGNED

ORBIS addresses the disconnects between ambitious ideas and collective actions at a large socio-technical scale. It responds to the profound lack of dialogue between citizenship and policy making institutions by providing a theoretically sound and highly pragmatic socio-technical solution to enable the transition to a more inclusive, transparent and trustful Deliberative Democracy in Europe. The project shapes and supports new democratic models that are developed through deliberative democracy processes; it follows a socio-constructive approach in which deliberative democracy is not a theory which prescribes new democratic practices and models, but rather the process through which we can collectively imagine and realize them. ORBIS provides new ways to understand and facilitate the emergence of new participatory democracy models, together with the mechanisms to scale them up and consolidate them at institutional level. It delivers: (i) a sound methodology for deliberative participation and co-creation at scale; (ii) novel AI-enhanced tools for deliberative participation across diverse settings; (iii) a novel socio-technical approach that augments the articulation between deliberative processes and representative institutions in liberal democracies; (iv) new evidence-based democratic models that emerge from the application of citizen deliberation processes; (v) demonstrated measurable impact of such innovations in real-world settings. The project builds on cutting-edge AI tools and technologies to develop a sustainable digital solution, and bridges theories and technological solutions from the fields of political and social science, social innovation, Artificial Intelligence, argumentation and digital democracy. The achievement of the project’s goal is validated through six use cases addressing contemporary issues at different scales and settings, experimenting with different civic participation and deliberation models, and involving diverse types of stakeholders.

Keywords: large scale deliberation,socio technical approach,open innovation,argumentation mining,conflict mediation,knowledge graphs,decision making
REliable & eXplAinable Swarm Intelligence for People with Reduced mObility (REXASI-PRO)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Digital, Industry and Space
Theme: Digital
Destination: A human-centred and ethical development of digital and industrial technologies
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Partnership: AI-DATA-ROBOTICS (co-programmed)
Countries involved: Italy,Germany,Spain,Belgium,Switzerland,United Kingdom,Romania
Call: Verifiable robustness, energy efficiency and transparency for Trustworthy AI: Scientific excellence boosting industrial competitiveness (AI, Data and Robotics Partnership) (RIA) (HORIZON-CL4-2021-HUMAN-01, 2021)
Start date: 2022-10-01
End date: 2025-09-30
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 3770558.75
EU funding (EUR): 3770558.5
Participants: 13
Project status: SIGNED

The REXASI-PRO project aims to release a novel engineering framework. The REXASI-PRO project aims to release a novel engineering framework to develop greener and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence solutions. In the methodology, safety, security, and explainability are entangled. In addition, throughout the entire lifecycle of the framework, ethics aspects will be continuously monitored. To this end, the REXASI-PRO project introduces several novelties. The project will develop in parallel the design of novel trustworthy-by-construction solutions for social navigations and a methodology to certify the robustness of AI-based autonomous vehicles for people with reduced mobility. The trustworthy-by-construction social navigation algorithms will exploit mathematical models of social robots. The robots will be trained by using both implicit and explicit communication. REXASI-PRO methodology augments existing system-level and item-level engineering frameworks by leveraging novel eXplainability methods to improve the entire system's robustness. REXASIPRO will release additional verification and validation approaches for safety and security with the AI in the loop. Among the other developments, a novel learning paradigm embeds safety requirements in Deep Neural Network for planning algorithms, runtime monitoring based on conformal prediction regions, trustable sensing, and secure communication. The methodology will be used to certify the robustness of both autonomous wheelchairs and flying robots. The flying robots will be equipped with unbiased machine learning solutions for people detection that will be reliable also in an emergency. Thus, REXASI-PRO will make the AI solutions greener. To this end, both an AI-based orchestrator to augment the intelligence of the robots and topological methods will be developed. The REXASI-PRO framework will be demonstrated by enabling the collaboration among autonomous wheelchairs and flying robots to help people with reduced mobility.

Keywords: computer science,trustworthy ai,reliable ai,machine learning,decision science platform,topological data analysis,data science
On the edge AI-driven Autonomous Inspection Robots (edge air)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Innovative Europe
Programme: The European Innovation Council (EIC)
Theme: EIC Accelerator
Destination: Challenges
Action type: EIC actions
Countries involved: Germany
Call: EIC Accelerator Challenge: Technologies for Open Strategic Autonomy (HORIZON-EIC-2022-ACCELERATOR-01, 2022)
Start date: 2023-04-01
End date: 2025-03-31
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 4109713.75
EU funding (EUR): 2499999.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Energy Robotics proposes an end-to-end robot agnostic AI-driven software platform that enables a diverse fleet of mobile robots to autonomously conduct routine inspections in industrial plants, including remote and hazardous facilities. The use of innovative on-the-edge Artificial Intelligence technologies for robotic awareness of the surrounding environment (semantic scene understanding, deeply connected data analysis and novel sense & react capabilities) will change the paradigm of Autonomous Inspection Robots (AIRs), enabling artificial “common sense” for execution of inspections in unstructured and frequently changing industrial environments. Edge AIR will unlock the full potential for our product in currently targeted industries (oil & gas, energy and chemical) and in new segments, such as mining, construction, security & surveillance and agriculture, that present large demand for inspection in constantly changing environments and robots capable of supervised manipulation.

Keywords: robotics,edge artificial intelligence,sense and react capabilities,semantic scene understanding,autonomous inspection robots
Enhancing TCR-T cell therapy by combinatorial therapeutic approaches to target neoantigen-positive cancers (NeoCure)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Proof of concept grants
Action type: ERC actions
Countries involved: Israel
Call: ERC PROOF OF CONCEPT GRANTS (ERC-2025-POC, 2025)
Start date: 2025-09-01
End date: 2027-02-28
Duration (months): 18.0
Total project cost (EUR): 150000.0
EU funding (EUR): 150000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Non-small-cell-lung-cancer (NSCLC) remains one of the most lethal cancers (≈1.5 million deaths annually), and current treatments fail to achieve universal, lasting remissions. While immune checkpoint therapies have improved NSCLC outcomes, many patients either do not respond or relapse, underscoring an urgent need for new, more effective strategies. NeoCure directly addresses this need by harnessing T-cell receptor (TCR) engineering to target tumor-specific neoantigens. In our prior research (ERC#101094980), we identified two prevalent neoantigens from common KRAS driver mutations (G12V and G12C) and isolated their cognate TCRs, which specifically recognize and eliminate cancer cells bearing these mutations. Notably, these KRAS G12V/C mutations (in the context of HLA-A*03:01) occur in an estimated 120,000 new lung, colon, and pancreatic cancer cases each year, highlighting the broad impact and commercial potential of this targeted approach. We have demonstrated a breakthrough combinatorial therapy: adding a lymphodepleting chemotherapy to KRAS G12V-specific TCR-T cell therapy significantly enhances neoantigen presentation and tumor killing. Building on this finding, NeoCure will evaluate novel combination treatments – pairing our KRAS-specific TCR-T cells with optimized chemotherapy regimens and neoantigen-targeted mRNA vaccines – in advanced humanized mouse models. This PoC is designed as a critical step toward clinical translation, aiming for complete tumor elimination in preclinical models. In parallel, we are executing key pre-commercialization activities to ensure a clear path to clinical application. These include engaging with regulatory authorities (FDA/EMA) to align with fast-track approval pathways, forging industry partnerships for co-development, and strengthening our intellectual property around the NeoCure TCRs and therapy platform. Through this comprehensive approach, NeoCure is positioned as a transformative innovation in cancer immunotherapy.
Biodiversity, abrupt ecosystem shifts and restoration: understanding their links to sustain drylands under global change (BIOSHIFT)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Advanced grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Environmental B iology, Ecology  and E volution
Panel description: For all organisms : Ecology, biodiversity, environmental change , evolutionary biology, behavioural ecology, microbial ecology , marine biology, ecophysiology, theoretical developments and mod elling
Countries involved: Spain
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): 2499351.0
EU funding (EUR): 2499351.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Global change and desertification drivers, such as climate change and increased fire frequency, make drylands more prone to abrupt shifts that can lead to the emergence of degraded states unable to provide key ecosystem services and to sustain life. However, we still lack an in-depth understanding of the prevalence and triggers of these shifts, and of the identity of those ecosystem attributes and services that are most affected, across global drylands. These uncertainties arise largely from the absence of global monitoring efforts and experiments investigating temporal changes in biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. Furthermore, the lack of a systematic evaluation of the ecological impacts of restoration actions, such as tree planting, hampers our capacity to assess their usefulness to prevent abrupt ecosystem shifts and to combat climate change and desertification. BIOSHIFT will combine global-scale experimentation and temporal field surveys with state-of-the-art Earth observation, mathematical modelling, -omics approaches, and statistical analyses to tackle these key knowledge gaps. Specifically, I will: i) determine the prevalence, drivers and consequences of abrupt ecosystem shifts in drylands, ii) assess whether in situ temporal changes in dryland biodiversity and ecosystem services exhibit threshold-like responses along global aridity gradients, and iii) conduct the first systematic field assessment of the ecological impacts of tree plantations and their capacity to prevent abrupt ecosystem shifts in drylands worldwide. By doing so, BIOSHIFT will make a major leap forward in our understanding of abrupt ecosystem shifts and provide unprecedent insights on how to monitor and manage them. This project will also provide the ecological underpinning to high profile international initiatives aimed at tackling biodiversity losses, mitigating global change and desertification impacts, and restoring degraded ecosystems across global drylands.

Keywords: drylands,global environmental change,tree plantations,biodiversity,abrupt ecosystem shifts,ecological restoration,regime shifts,ecosystem services,spatio temporal dynamics
SECURITY PROTECTION TOOLS FOR NETWORKED MEDICAL DEVICES (SEPTON)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Health
Theme: Health
Destination: Maintaining an innovative, sustainable and globally competitive health industry
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Countries involved: Greece,Italy,Netherlands,Germany
Call: Enhancing cybersecurity of connected medical devices (HORIZON-HLTH-2022-IND-13, 2022)
Start date: 2022-12-01
End date: 2025-11-30
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 4897778.75
EU funding (EUR): 4897778.5
Participants: 10
Project status: SIGNED

SEPTON aims to address the gap in the generic technologies and processes referring to the IT network infrastructure with a holistic approach towards reinforcing NMD security within the healthcare centre premises. The project will advance cutting-edge solutions in healthcare cybersecurity targeting the aforementioned health providers and particularly focusing on networked medical devices (NMDs). The SEPTON approach will result in a comprehensive cybersecurity toolkit providing tools and mechanisms to be used in hospitals and care centres for a) the protection of networked medical devices, including wearable and implantable devices, and using techniques such as polymorphism b) the secure and privacy preserving data exchanges between NMDs, utilising techniques such as blockchain, differential privacy and encryption c) behavioural anomaly detection, utilising a cybersecurity analytics framework coupled with machine learning techniques and hardware acceleration for increased performance and d) NMD vulnerability assessment. The usability of the proposed solutions will be tested in a realistic setup via extensive pilot trials, facilitated by the participation of two healthcare organisations

Keywords: networked medical devices,cybersecurity,wearable and implantable devices,blockchains,differential privacy,anomaly detection