Data-Gouv-ML/pcri-informations-sur-les-projets-laureats huggingface dataset:
Chemical Control of Heating and Cooling in Molecular Junctions: Optimizing Function and Stability (CHEMHEAT)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Physical and Analytical Chemical sciences
Countries involved: Denmark
Call:  (ERC-2010-StG_20091028, 2010)
Start date: 2010-12-01
End date: 2015-11-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1499999.0
EU funding (EUR): 1499999.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Nanoscale systems binding single molecules, or small numbers of molecules, in conducting junctions show considerable promise for a range of technological applications, from photovoltaics to rectifiers to sensors. These environments differ significantly from the traditional domain of chemical studies involving molecules in solution and the gas phase, necessitating renewed efforts to understand the physical properties of these systems. The objective of this proposal concerns one particular class of physical processes: understanding and controlling local heating in molecular junctions in terms of excitation, dissipation and transfer. Local heating and dissipation in molecular junctions has long been a concern due to the possibly detrimental impact on device stability and function. More recently there has been increased interest, as these processes underlie both spectroscopic techniques and potential technological applications. Together these issues make an investigation of ways to chemically control local heating in molecular junctions timely and important. The proposal objective will be addressed through the investigation of three challenges: - Developing chemical control of local heating in molecular junctions. - Developing chemical control of heat dissipation in molecular junctions. - Design of optimal thermoelectric materials. These three challenges constitute distinct, yet complementary, avenues for investigation with progress in each area supporting the other two. All three challenges build on existing theoretical methods, with the important shift of focus to methods to achieve chemical control. The combination of state-of-the-art computational methods with careful chemical studies promises significant new developments for the area.

Keywords: molecular electronics,heat transfer,single-molecule conduction,electron transport,inelastic scattering
Mechanics Of Deformation of the Earth's Lithosphere. (MODEL)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Earth system science
Countries involved: Germany,Switzerland
Call:  (ERC-2010-StG_20091028, 2010)
Start date: 2010-12-01
End date: 2015-11-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1420920.0
EU funding (EUR): 1420920.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

The deformation of lithospheric plates result in a wide variety of geodynamical processes such as mountain belts, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes. Since most lithospheric processes occur on a million-year timescale and involve rocks which have a nonlinear rheology, they are difficult to reproduce with laboratory experiments. Moreover, the geological record yields an incomplete picture of such processes and geophysical techniques mainly give a snapshot of how the Earth looks like today. As a result, most geological reconstructions remain interpretations that are not always mechanically consistent. Here, we will employ computer models that are capable of simulating lithospheric deformation under geological conditions, while employing realistic laboratory-derived creep laws of rocks. We propose to: 1) Constrain the present-day rheology and structure of the lithosphere in active mountain belts (European Alps and the Himalaya) by combining forward models with inverse techniques constrained with available geophysical datasets. 2) Develop mechanically consistent reconstructions of mountain belts by using the best-fit rheologies from step 1 as an input for 3D models that are performed on geological timescales, and which are constrained with geological datasets. 3) Obtain insights into the physics of processes related to the deformation of (i) fold and thrust-belts and (ii) salt-related structures in sedimentary basins. The project will significantly advance our understanding of dynamics of the lithosphere and deliver models that satisfy both geophysical and geological constraints. Therefore, the outcome of the proposed work will provide a solid framework for understanding most geological processes that are related to the deformation of the lithosphere and crust.

Keywords: lithospheric deformation,mountain building processes,numerical modelling,continental collision,rheology
Catalysis at the Nanoscale (NANOCAT)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Physical and Analytical Chemical sciences
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call:  (ERC-2010-StG_20091028, 2010)
Start date: 2010-09-01
End date: 2015-08-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1500000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Is it possible to really 'see' individual molecules in action as they are involved in a chemical reaction at a surface? And can we, in this way, get a complete understanding of reaction mechanisms, at the resolution of atoms? The importance of studying chemical reactions at surfaces has recently been highlighted by Gerhard Ertl being awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2007, for elucidating mechanisms of chemical processes on heterogeneous catalysts at the single molecule level with Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (STM). Although ground-breaking, these studies were carried out in ultra-high vacuum, which is, however, an unrealistic condition for conventional chemical or biological reactions which usually occur in a liquid medium. The aim of this ERC proposal is to establish a research area at the interface of chemistry and physics which has so far been nearly completely unexplored: the investigation of chemical reactions at solid-liquid interfaces at the highest detail possible, by visualizing molecules with STM while they are involved in a reaction. By doing so, unique information about reaction mechanisms can be obtained by looking at individual molecules, instead of ensembles where the behaviour of many molecules is averaged. Towards this goal I propose to use a newly developed catalysis-STM setup, which is equipped with a liquid-cell and a bell-jar, and in which the conditions that are commonly applied in chemical laboratory processes (e.g. addition and withdrawal of chemicals, working under different atmospheres) can be closely resembled. In this setup I intend to carry out chemical reactions at a surface and monitor the behaviour of individual adsorbed catalysts, while they are in action. More specifically, it is my aim to investigate in detail the relation between structure and reactivity at the nanoscale

Keywords: single molecules,scanning probe microscopy,stm,porphyrins
On-chip memristive artificial nano-synapses and neural networks (NANOBRAIN)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Condensed matter physics
Countries involved: France
Call:  (ERC-2010-StG_20091028, 2010)
Start date: 2010-11-01
End date: 2015-10-31
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1495803.0
EU funding (EUR): 1495803.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

These last fifty years have seen Von Neumann computing architectures boom. Nevertheless, even the most powerful digital computers cannot rapidly solve apparently simple problems such as image interpretation. However, because its structure is massively parallel and analog, the human brain is able to perform such tasks in a fraction of second. Neuromorphic circuits allow to go beyond conventional digital architectures. An on-chip implementation of these circuits requires to be able to fabricate nanometer sized, analog, reconfigurable, fast components. While the spiking neurons can easily be fabricated with classical CMOS technology, the synapse plasticity is challenging to achieve. In 1971 L. Chua has introduced a new circuit element, called memristor , a non-linear resistance which by definition includes a memory effect. Only last year, a team in Hewlett-Packard has for the first time proposed a device for synaptic applications showing memristive properties based on electromigration of oxygen vacancies in Titanium Oxide. The project NanoBrain aims first at developing alternative memristors based on different physical principles (spintronics and ferroelectricity), avoiding in particular the potential over-heating and fragility of the electromigration-based devices. The final goal of the project is to prove the efficiency of these new nano-synapses by integrating them into functional neural networks.

Keywords: memristors,spintronics,functional oxides,artificial neural networks,neuromorphic circuits
Understanding Designing and Analyzing Computational Cameras (COMPCAMERAANALYZ)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Computer science and informatics
Countries involved: Israel
Call:  (ERC-2010-StG_20091028, 2010)
Start date: 2010-12-01
End date: 2015-11-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 756845.0
EU funding (EUR): 756845.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

Computational cameras go beyond 2D images and allow the extraction of more dimensions from the visual world such as depth, multiple viewpoints and multiple illumination conditions. They also allow us to overcome some of the traditional photography challenges such as defocus blur, motion blur, noise and resolution. The increasing variety of computational cameras is raising the need for a meaningful comparison across camera types. We would like to understand which cameras are better for specific tasks, which aspects of a camera make it better than others and what is the best performance we can hope to achieve. Our 2008 paper introduced a general framework to address the design and analysis of computational cameras. A camera is modeled as a linear projection in ray space. Decoding the camera data then deals with inverting the linear projection. Since the number of sensor measurements is usually much smaller than the number of rays, the inversion must be treated as a Bayesian inference problem accounting for prior knowledge on the world. Despite significant progress which has been made in the recent years, the space of computational cameras is still far from being understood. Computational camera analysis raises the following research challenges: 1) What is a good way to model prior knowledge on ray space? 2) Seeking efficient inference algorithms and robust ways to decode the world from the camera measurements. 3) Evaluating the expected reconstruction accuracy of a given camera. 4) Using the expected reconstruction performance for evaluating and comparing camera types. 5) What is the best camera? Can we derive upper bounds on the optimal performance? We propose research on all aspects of computational camera design and analysis. We propose new prior models which will significantly simplify the inference and evaluation tasks. We also propose new ways to bound and evaluate computational cameras with existing priors.

Keywords: computational photography,light fields,bayesian estimation,deblurring
Metal Ions and Metal Ion Complexes Guiding Folding and Function of Single RNA Molecules (MIRNA)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Materials and Synthesis
Countries involved: Switzerland
Call:  (ERC-2010-StG_20091028, 2010)
Start date: 2010-12-01
End date: 2015-11-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1495729.0
EU funding (EUR): 1495729.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

RNAs play crucial roles in cellular metabolic processes, e.g. ribozymes in RNA-processing or riboswitches in the regulation of protein expression. Metal ions thereby guide and determine folding and function of every complex nucleic acid structure. Recently, it has become increasingly evident that RNA folding and catalysis are extremely sensitive to changes in concentration and nature of the metal ion involved as well as to single-atom changes in metal ion complexes. The elucidation of the specific binding of certain metal ions and their complexes by nucleic acids poses an enormous challenge. This recognition process must depend solely on basic coordination chemical principles but is poorly understood. The goal of this project is to understand the effect of metal ions and their complexes on local and global structure formation of single large RNAs: Specifically, the influence of metal ions on the assembly of the catalytic core of group II intron ribozymes as well as the influence of single corrin side chains of coenzyme B12 to induce the structural change of its 202 nucleotide long riboswitch will be characterized. Combining classical Inorganic, Coordination, Analytical, and Organic Chemistry with Biophysics, we will apply single molecule Förster Resonance Energy Transfer spectroscopy (smFRET) together with hydrolytic cleavage experiments and chemical synthesis. SmFRET studies allow us to investigate every molecule individually instead of a bulk signal and thus to observe also minor populations. Our results will reveal how single metal ions and ligand atoms guide and influence global structure, folding, and function of ribozymes and riboswitches, and promise to have a significant impact on Biological Inorganic Chemistry, RNA Biochemistry, as well as Medicinal Chemistry.

Keywords: bioinorganic chemistry,rna,smfret,metal ions,coenzyme b12,ribozyme,riboswitch
Rosetta s Way Back to the Source: Towards Reverse Engineering of Complex Software (ROSETTA)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Computer science and informatics
Countries involved: Netherlands
Call:  (ERC-2010-StG_20091028, 2010)
Start date: 2011-05-01
End date: 2016-04-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1339000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1339000.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

We propose a research program (Rossetta) towards reverse engineering of complex software that is available only in binary form. Most of the commercial software industry assumes that compilation (the translation of source code to binary code), is irreversible in practice for real applications. The research question for Rosetta is whether this irreversibility assumption is reasonable. If successful, the project will have a major impact on the software industry. The challenge is daunting, because binary code after compilation lacks most of the visible structure and semantic information that is available at the source code level. There is no definition of data structures, no helpful names of variables and functions, no semantic information, and no indication of what chunks of instructions are supposed to do. However, the Rosetta project has a clear methodology for source recovery. Reverse engineering is approached as an iterative process with an initial focus on recovering data structures, followed by recovery of code. We combine static and dynamic techniques with usage monitoring and machine learning. A key insight is that even if all visible structure has been removed from the data in memory, the structures will still be *used* in a way that corresponds to the source code. By observing the use of data and application of machine learning techniques, we will recover both the data and the source. We store all information that we uncover in the Rosetta database. The database provides a handle on both the data structures and large sections of the code (and at various levels of abstraction). We believe that our methods will allow reverse engineering of very complex commercial software. Doing so will be our main criterion for success. In addition, however, we propose to demonstrate the usefulness of our analysis by automatically hardening software (to make it resilient against many types of attack) without requiring any access to the source co

Keywords: reverse engineering
Systems Chemistry from Bottom Up: Switching, Gating and Oscillations in Non Enzymatic Peptide Networks (BOTTOM-UP_SYSCHEM)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Materials and Synthesis
Countries involved: Israel
Call:  (ERC-2010-StG_20091028, 2010)
Start date: 2010-10-01
End date: 2015-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1500000.0
EU funding (EUR): 1500000.0
Participants: 1
Project status: CLOSED

The study of synthetic molecular networks is of fundamental importance for understanding the organizational principles of biological systems and may well be the key to unraveling the origins of life. In addition, such systems may be useful for parallel synthesis of molecules, implementation of catalysis via multi-step pathways, and as media for various applications in nano-medicine and nano-electronics. We have been involved recently in developing peptide-based replicating networks and revealed their dynamic characteristics. We argue here that the structural information embedded in the polypeptide chains is sufficiently rich to allow the construction of peptide 'Systems Chemistry', namely, to facilitate the use of replicating networks as cell-mimetics, featuring complex dynamic behavior. To bring this novel idea to reality, we plan to take a unique holistic approach by studying such networks both experimentally and via simulations, for elucidating basic-principles and towards applications in adjacent fields, such as molecular electronics. Towards realizing these aims, we will study three separate but inter-related objectives: (i) design and characterization of networks that react and rewire in response to external triggers, such as light, (ii) design of networks that operate via new dynamic rules of product formation that lead to oscillations, and (iii) exploitation of the molecular information gathered from the networks as means to control switching and gating in molecular electronic devices. We believe that achieving the project's objectives will be highly significant for the development of the arising field of Systems Chemistry, and in addition will provide valuable tools for studying related scientific fields, such as systems biology and molecular electronics.

Keywords: systems chemistry,molecular networks,self-replication,peptides,logic gates,molecular switch,coiled coils
InteGrated Laboratories to investigate the mechanics of ASeismic vs. Seismic faulting (GLASS)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Earth system science
Countries involved: Italy
Call:  (ERC-2010-StG_20091028, 2010)
Start date: 2010-10-01
End date: 2015-09-30
Duration (months): 60.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1514400.0
EU funding (EUR): 1514400.0
Participants: 3
Project status: CLOSED

Earthquakes are potentially catastrophic phenomena that have a huge impact on the environment and society. Understanding the physical processes responsible for earthquakes and faulting requires high quality data and direct observations of the underlying phenomena. However, no direct measurements can be made at depth where earthquakes initiate and propagate. Our knowledge of the mechanical properties of fault zones relies on Earth surface observations and experiments conducted in rock deformation laboratories. Despite recent progress, we have much to learn about the mechanics of earthquakes and the complex and inherently scale-dependent processes that govern earthquake faulting. Central Italy is a unique test site that can serve as a natural laboratory for the integration of high resolution data gathered from different disciplines. I propose to develop my innovative and multidisciplinary research to unravel the physico-chemico processes responsible for faulting phenomena ranging from aseismic creep to seismic slip. GLASS will aim to: (i) locate and analyze different types of transient seismic signals from the actively deforming crust, such as fast/slow and high/low frequency earthquakes and non volcanic tremors; (ii) study deformation processes in outcrops of ancient faults that represent exhumed analogues of the active structures today; (iii) characterize the fluid flow and frictional properties of faults in rock deformation experiments; (iv) investigate earthquake nucleation and recurrence by developing numerical models that will be constrained by field and experimental data and calibrated by seismological records. The proposed research will allow to create unprecedented insight into the mechanics of earthquakes and to investigate deformation processes from the crustal to the nano-scale and from a time window ranging from the seismic cycle to entire geologic fault history.

Keywords: faults,earthquakes,friction
Optimal dynamcal control of quantum entanglement (ODYCQUENT)

Framework: FP7 — Ideas
Programme: European Research Council
Theme: European research council
Destination: Starting grants
Action type: Support for frontier research (ERC)
Panel: Fundamental constituents of matter
Countries involved: United Kingdom,Germany
Call:  (ERC-2010-StG_20091028, 2010)
Start date: 2011-01-01
End date: 2016-08-31
Duration (months): 68.0
Total project cost (EUR): 1173240.0
EU funding (EUR): 1173240.0
Participants: 2
Project status: CLOSED

The present proposal aims at the optimal control of the preparation, distribution and storage of entangled states of multipartite quantum systems. We will employ our recently developed observable entanglement measures to dynamically optimize entanglement per se rather than fidelity with respect to some specified entangled target state. We will apply these tools to NV-centers and trapped ions in order to devise time-dependent control pulses (e.g.) laser pulses) that steer these systems into highly entangled states. In a second branch we will extend our theoretical tools for entanglement control in order to achieve close-to-perfectly correlated states even in systems with strong decoherence.

Keywords: entanglement measures,optimal control,coherent control decoherence