Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Uncovering the molecular mechanisms of oligodendrocyte plasticity in cognitive aging. (OligoAging)

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: Israel
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2024-STG, 2024)
Start date: 2024-09-01
End date: 2029-08-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1498665.0
EU funding (EUR): 1498665.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Myelin, an oligodendrocyte membrane spirally wrapped around axons, has only recently been appreciated to be a plastic structure, which constantly remodels in response to experience. Myelin plasticity is based on proliferation and maturation of oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs) to form new myelinating oligodendrocytes (oligodendrogenesis), in conjunction with remodelling of myelin that is already established. The cellular and molecular mechanisms governing myelin plasticity and how it contributes to aging-related cognitive decline remain mostly unknown. Whereas cognitive aging is often attributed to neuronal vulnerability, here I propose that early oligodendrocyte dysfunction is a key driver of cognitive decline. I recently found that oligodendrocytes in the aging brain react to rejuvenating cues arising from young cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), with substantial effects on their cellular function and memory consolidation. Mechanistically, I identified the transcription factor serum response factor (SRF) to be necessary in oligodendrocytes for developmental myelination (Iram et al, bioRxiv), and showed that SRF is downregulated with age and induced by young CSF (Iram et al., Nature). Strikingly, oligodendrocytes remain susceptible to microenvironmental cues even at late stages of aging, positioning them as promising targets for therapeutic interventions. Combining genetic, optogenetic, and transcriptomic tools with cutting-edge whole proteome metabolic labelling, I will pursue three complementary objectives: 1) Uncover the transcriptional regulation of oligodendrocyte plasticity and aging. 2) Elucidate the molecular basis of failed oligodendrogenesis in aged mice. 3) Define mechanisms underlying decline in myelin plasticity with age by nascent proteome tagging. Completion of this work will have a profound impact on our understanding of how oligodendrocytes age and provide novel targets for brain rejuvenation through improving myelin health and integrity.

Keywords: oligodendrocyte,myelin,aging,plasticity,memory
Seaweed farming 3D printed structures using new generation alternative binders: a novel interdisciplinary approach, from computational fluid dynamics to life cycle assessment. (eSeaPrint)

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: Denmark,Switzerland
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2023 (HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01, 2023)
Start date: 2025-06-02
End date: 2027-06-01
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 230774.4
EU funding (EUR): 230774.4
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

In March 2023, the EU Parliament adopted a new carbon sink target that raises climate ambition by increasing the EU's carbon sink capacity by 15% by 2030. Seaweed farming has huge potential to sequester carbon dioxide, but the current state of the art raises questions about the cost and environmental effectiveness of such a structure. A new alternative solution of vertical marine printed algae farms, made of an alternative material and with limited impact on the marine ecosystem, can solve these problems. The research plan, based on interdisciplinary aspects combining two approaches, consists of a three-scale study related to computational rheology, and of a two-scale investigation related to Life Cycle Assessment. The development of printing technology and a newly developed in-line powder-fluid mixer brings the possibility of less impactful material processing with an industrial mindset. To generalise such a complex processing issue raised by alternative binders and enable topology optimised design, novel numerical simulation approaches need to be developed to link experimental models with computational fluid dynamics simulations. Underwater 3D printing of such complex materials also raises very novel issues, closely related to the opening of cracks that compromises the aesthetics and durability of 3D printed materials. The goal of reducing the carbon footprint and the use of raw materials can be achieved through two strategies: the first is to reduce the amount of material for a given application thanks to the 3D printing of optimised structures, while the second is related to the Life Cycle Assessment of alternative materials and to give an overview of the benefits along the entire value chain of the seaweed farming structure during its service life, from ingredient production to waste management. This case study raises topical issues that still need to be addressed in terms of process simulation, structural design of complex structures and life cycle assessment.
2d-ion crystals for quantum computing and near-term quantum applications (2dQC)

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: Austria
Call: ERC PROOF OF CONCEPT GRANTS (ERC-2024-POC, 2024)
Start date: 2025-06-01
End date: 2026-11-30
Duration (months): 18.0
Total project cost (EUR): 156428.57
EU funding (EUR): 150000.0
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

The development of a general-purpose quantum processor requires the possibility of scaling the device up to large numbers of quantum bits and the realisation of fault-tolerant quantum gate operations between them, ideally with the possibility to carry out gates between arbitrary qubit pairs. In trapped-ion based implementations, quantum gates are typically carried out on sub-ensembles of qubits that are stored in linear strings of ions. These sub-ensembles are subsequently connected by shuttling ions around or using photonic interfaces. To reduce the footprint of such a device, we propose to replace linear strings by two-dimensional ion crystals and directly operate on 100 ion-qubits. Within this application, we will demonstrate the realisation of entangling gate operations between arbitrary ion pairs in a 2d-crystal with fidelities better than 99%. In collaboration with the company Alpine Quantum Technologies (AQT), we will make off-the-shelf 2D ion-crystals available for computational tasks by integrating the traps needed to store the crystals into the quantum computing systems developed by AQT. The control of these first-of-its-kind 2D ion-trap array will be based upon standardised quantum software development kits for this novel computing architecture. The realisation of a universal gate set in a processor with about 100 qubits with all-to-all connectivity will, beyond quantum computation, spearhead novel applications in hybrid digital-analog quantum simulations, quantum metrology and quantum networks.
Science Advice for Policy by European Academies (SAPEA)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Civil Security for Society
Theme: Other topics
Destination: Other destinations
Action type: Coordination and support actions
Countries involved: Germany,Netherlands,France,Belgium,United Kingdom
Call: Science Advice for Policy by European Academies (HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-EA-IBA, 2021)
Start date: 2022-05-01
End date: 2024-12-31
Duration (months): 32.0
Total project cost (EUR): 3712326.24
EU funding (EUR): 3712326.24
Participants: 7
Project status: CLOSED

The project 'Science Advice for Policy by European Academies' (SAPEA) is part of the Scientific Advice Mechanism of the European Commission. At the request of the EC, it provides targeted scientific evidence in a timely and transparent manner to inform the production of science advice by the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors while ensuring the highest scientific quality, developed by complete and independent evidence analysis and synthesis. SAPEA comprises five European Academy Networks: Academia Europaea, ALLEA, Euro-CASE, FEAM and YASAS. It contributes to widening participation by mobilising its network of some 110 academies from more than 40 countries across Europe, each with hundreds of Fellows. SAPEA aims to strengthen the links between European science academies and to ensure their active participation in its activities. SAPEA assembles interdisciplinary working groups of scientific experts. The working groups produce Evidence Review Reports or other scientific inputs for the Chief Scientific Advisors. The process is supported by Systematic Literature Reviews. SAPEA aims to ensure wide geographical coverage including Widening Countries and gender diversity, coverage of all relevant scientific fields and interdisciplinarity in the process, as well as an open and inclusive approach to involve experts who are not Academy Fellows, and early and mid-career researchers. Experts contribute on a voluntary basis. SAPEA organises an inclusive dialogue about major societal challenges via a series of events, social media and further D&E&C activities to communicate the project’s results and the work of the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors, engaging with the scientific community, policy-makers, stakeholders and the wider public. These activities contribute to increasing awareness of the significance of science advice for policy and to improving transparency of the EU policy-making process. More information can be found on the project´s website: www.sapea.info.

Keywords: evidence informed policy making,science advice for policy,european science academies,group of chief scientific advisors,european commission,scientific advice mechanism,sam,inclusive dialogue
LUMI AI Factory - Service Center (LAIF Service Center)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Digital, Industry and Space
Theme: Public-private partnerships
Destination: European High Performance Computing
Action type: Research and Innovation actions
Partnership: EUROHPC (JU-JTI)
Countries involved: Finland,Czechia,Denmark,Estonia,Norway,Poland
Call: Artificial Intelligence Factories (HORIZON-JU-EUROHPC-2025-AI-01-IBA, 2025)
Start date: 2025-03-01
End date: 2028-02-29
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 36095572.5
EU funding (EUR): 18047786.25
Participants: 9
Project status: SIGNED

As AI technologies and methodologies continue to advance swiftly, Europe has been actively developing and strengthening the ecosystem of frameworks, environments, tools and services required to boost innovation. This comprehensive approach aims to harmonise AI strategies across the continent, addressing the technology’s challenges and opportunities, while assessing its impact on public and private sectors, and society at large. Leveraging the ongoing momentum and LUMI’s successful history, the Finland led consortium responds to the HORIZON-JU-EUROHPC-2025-AI-01-IBA call by introducing the LUMI AI Factory Service Center project, part of the broader LUMI AI Factory ecosystem leveraging the current LUMI supercomputer but gearing up for the upcoming LUMI-AI system and the related AI-optimised quantum experimental platform LUMI-IQ.

Keywords: artificial intelligence,ai technologies,ai ecosystem,ai factory,lumi ai factory
HeatScopy - Visualizing the Structure of Phase Change Materials (HeatScopy)

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: Netherlands,Australia
Call: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2024 (HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01, 2024)
Start date: 2025-05-15
End date: 2027-05-14
Duration (months): 24.0
Total project cost (EUR): 217076.16
EU funding (EUR): 217076.16
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

Seasonal and short-term heat storage with phase change materials (PCMs) represent a promising alternative to traditional carbon-intensive energy systems. They could reduce greenhouse emissions and provide sustainable renewable heating systems. Paraffin waxes have demonstrated potential for this purpose and fillers to enhance the thermal conductivity of waxes have been developed. However, these mixtures are expensive and unsustainable to upscale. Bio-based PCMs are cheaper, but often come with large heterogeneities, for which heat storage performance is difficult to predict. This study proposes the advancement of experimental methodologies to identify the impact of heterogeneities and mixture composition on phase change material performance for the development of sustainable products. An experimental approach is particularly beneficial, since computational techniques often require assumptions for high purity, which deviate significantly from the composition of naturally-occuring waxes. In this context, the proposed project will build on new experimental tools enabling to characterize heterogeneous and more complex mixtures, shed light on literature gaps about the mechanism of co-crystallization and speed up the selection of more sustainable and less costly PCMs. This study proposes to use atomic force microscopy, low field nuclear magnetic resonance, inverse gas chromatography and T-history, to reveal the mechanism behind the structural evolution during the phase change. A workflow will be developed using conventional paraffin wax and filler mixtures. Then, the established workflow will be applied to plant-based waxes, such as soy wax and coconut oil-based wax. The final goal is to predict heat storage performance of novel materials, from the evolution of structural features characterized experimentally. This workflow will facilitate the selection and testing for PCM to ensure optimal heat storage performance and a reduction in greenhouse emissions for heating.

Keywords: phase change materials,energy storage,atomic force microscopy,nuclear magnetic resonance,inverse gas chromatography,paraffin wax,plant based wax
Multifunctional Platform Technology for Magnetically Actuated Controlled Drug Release from Biodegradable Scaffolds (MAD Control)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting 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: Germany
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2022-STG, 2022)
Start date: 2024-01-01
End date: 2028-12-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1495288.0
EU funding (EUR): 1495288.0
Participants: 2
Project status: SIGNED

The extremely popular engineering field of drug-eluting biodegradable scaffolds for regenerative medicine, cancer treatment and cardiovascular therapies has largely failed to ensure therapy at the right place, at the right time and with the right dose. Control of actuated drug release is the grand challenge to solve. Previous attempts struggled because, at this time, no technology is able to cope with the influence of scaffold alterations with degradation. MAD Control will establish a multifunctional platform for biodegradable cardiovascular scaffolds and (i) make model-based predictions of degradation states from real-time imaging, (ii) reveal which actuation is best for targeted drug release in the actual degradation state, and (iii) uncover how to generate this actuation. The platform comprises magnetic nanoparticles in hybrid scaffold materials, tailored for a double function: sensors for magnetic particle imaging, and actuators for drug release with magnetic fluid hyperthermia. The imaging results are matched with degradation states based on prediction models to be created, and magnetic fluid hyperthermia is induced in a multimodal device to be developed. Control is achieved by coupling material data streams, acquired through automated and comprehensive in-situ measurements of the hybrid materials’ properties, with modelling and control algorithms. Thus, the multifunctional platform promises a theranostic breakthrough: On-demand release of a precise amount of drugs that can be deliberately chosen. Targeting efficacy is finally measured in vivo, after extensive in-vitro testing. The outcome of this project will be truly transformative, opening new possibilities for research and development of bio¬degradable implants as well as of magnetic transport and release systems for active agents, and it is never limited to cardiovascular applications.

Keywords: magnetic nanoparticles,biodegradable hybrid materials,magnetic fluid hyperthermia,magnetic particle imaging
Enhancing the In-situ Environmental Observations across Under-sampled Deserts - CiROCCO (CiROCCO)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness
Programme: Food, Bioeconomy Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment
Theme: Bio-Environment
Destination: Innovative governance, environmental observations and digital solutions in support of the Green Deal
Action type: Innovation actions
Countries involved: Greece,Cyprus,Luxembourg,Serbia,Spain,Switzerland,Egypt
Call: New technologies for acquiring in-situ observation datasets to address climate change effects (HORIZON-CL6-2022-GOVERNANCE-01, 2022)
Start date: 2023-03-01
End date: 2026-02-28
Duration (months): 36.0
Total project cost (EUR): 3583218.75
EU funding (EUR): 3147975.0
Participants: 12
Project status: SIGNED

CiROCCO’s vision is to establish an end-to-end sensing system, composed of a distributed network of cost-effective sensing nodes coupled with state-of-the-art data fusion remote sensing and assimilation modelling techniques. A mix of wireless communications including satellite, and local Wireless Sensor Networks is used for the collection of data. The defined network of sensors will enhance the current lack of ground observation in desert areas covering Egypt, Serbia and Spain, offering an operational and in parallel easy to maintain and expand solution. Four services are developed i) Renewable energy systems planning ii) Air quality early warning system for human health iii) Land use and ecosystem management iv) Modelling of GHGs and particles emissions, to validate the quality of the collected data and drive the sustainability and exploitation path of the overall system. CiROCCO performance and capabilities will be tested and validated in real-life settings in four large in Cyprus, Egypt, Serbia and Spain. Commercialisation services ensure the sustainability of the installation and in parallel FAIR management of data will support Cross-COPERNICUS ecosystem integration and assimilation services.
Bacterial Alkaloid Biosynthesis off the Beaten Path: Compartmentalization and Non-Enzymatic Transformations in Non-Canonical Alkaloid Biosynthesis (ComBiNE)

Framework: Horizon Europe — Excellent Science
Programme: European Research Council (ERC)
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: ERC actions
Panel: Synthetic Chemistry and Materials
Panel description: New materials and new synthetic approaches, structure -properties relations, solid state chemistry, molecular architecture, organic chemistry
Countries involved: Germany
Call: ERC STARTING GRANTS (ERC-2024-STG, 2024)
Start date: 2024-12-01
End date: 2029-11-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1499998.0
EU funding (EUR): 1499998.0
Participants: 1
Project status: SIGNED

Nature is a remarkable pharmaceutical chemist. More than 50% of approved drugs are natural products (NPs) or have drawn inspiration from them. According to the central dogma of bacterial NP biosynthesis all transformations responsible for the formation and modification of a NP scaffold are carried out by enzymes encoded in a biosynthetic gene cluster (BGC). Sophisticated genome mining algorithms have been developed to identify NP BGCs in microbial genome sequences. These algorithms excel in recognizing canonical BGCs. Non-canonical BGCs associated with NPs that are not biosynthesized following textbook biosynthetic knowledge evade detection by state-of-the-art genome mining algorithms. We have identified alkaloids that undergo non-enzymatic transformations, thus defying the central dogma of NP biosynthesis. Bacteria likely employ specialized micro-compartments to facilitate these spontaneous reactions. The ComBiNE team will develop machine learning-based genome mining algorithms to systematically identify and characterize alkaloid BGCs that currently elude detection. These non-canonical pathways biosynthesize alkaloids independent of the ribosome and non-ribosomal peptide synthetases. We will focus on alkaloids that undergo non-enzymatic transformations in bacterial micro-compartments. We will establish a model system to study the level of compartmentalization necessary to facilitate spontaneous reactions. Insights gained from these studies will be used to engineer NP and primary metabolic pathways for the non-enzymatic fusion of tailor-made NPs or primary metabolites with complementary reactivity. Spontaneous reactions in bacterial micro-compartments can be harnessed for the fusion of two NPs with different targets to create bispecific chimeras to combat drug resistance or to fuse bioactive and homing components to mitigate off-target effects. The proposed research will inspire the development of biomimetic syntheses and expand NP chemical and biosynthetic space.

Keywords: bacterial natural products,alkaloids,genome mining,biosynthesis,structure elucidation,compartmentalized biosynthesis,non enzymatic reactions,spontaneous reactions,nmr,mass spectrometry