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Two new ERC Proof of Concept 2025 grant recipients in CNRS Physics laboratories

Europe and International Distinction

The European Research Council (ERC) has just announced the second wave of projects that have been awarded a 2025 Proof of Concept grant. Sophie Carenco, a CNRS researcher at CINAM, and Thomas Salez, a CNRS researcher at LOMA, are the latest recipients of this grant, which rewards established scientists who are recognised in their field.

BIFFTANNEN - Bio-physico-chemical Insights by Fluorescence-free Flow-induced Taylor Analysis using Neuronal Networks for Ensembles of Nanoparticles

The characterisation of complex suspensions composed of microscopic entities is an essential task for control and purification processes in the water treatment, pharmaceutical, food and cosmetics industries. Existing methods for performing such tasks are often costly, low-throughput or high-volume, single-modal, based on external markers, with moderate resolution, and generally provide only partial information such as average particle size. By leveraging the fundamental knowledge acquired and methods developed as part of the EMetBrown project on microscopic transport in confinement, the BIFFTANNEN project aims to overcome the above limitations. The main objective is to develop and deploy an innovative and versatile bio-physico-chemical characterisation platform. It will uniquely combine state-of-the-art methods in microfluidics, imaging and deep learning, using absorption-based Taylor dispersion analysis, spectrometry and advanced statistical inference.

Plateforme de caractérisation développée dans le projet. Des suspensions complexes d'entités microscopiques (molécules, protéines, nanoparticules, oligomères, polymères, etc.) sont advectées, diffusent ou réagissent chimiquement, dans une puce microfluidique alimentée via un réservoir sélectionné par un bras à seringue automatisé. L'absorption lumineuse couplée à des méthodes d'inférence statistique par apprentissage profond permet d'identifier de manière fiable les espèces impliquées et de reconstruire leurs distributions de taille dans le temps.
Characterisation platform developed as part of the project. Complex suspensions of microscopic entities (molecules, proteins, nanoparticles, oligomers, polymers, etc.) are advected, diffused or chemically reacted in a microfluidic chip fed via a reservoir selected by an automated syringe arm. Light absorption coupled with deep learning statistical inference methods makes it possible to reliably identify the species involved and reconstruct their size distributions over time.

The BIFFTANNEN project is led by Thomas Salez.

Thomas Salez is a CNRS senior researcher at the Laboratoire ondes et matière d’Aquitaine (LOMA, CNRS / Université de Bordeaux).

Read the full profile of Thomas Salez

PRELUDE - Precise Deuteration at the Tailored Surface of Nickel Phosphide Nanocatalysts

The PRELUDE project aims to develop a new catalyst for producing deuterated organic molecules, which are essential in medicines, metabolic tracers and OLED screens. Today, these molecules are expensive and difficult to synthesise, as their production relies on rare metals such as ruthenium and iridium, and highly selective processes.

What is innovative about PRELUDE? Using nickel phosphide (Ni₂P) nanoparticles, a material 100 times cheaper than current catalysts, combined with phosphines to guide the reaction with precision. This catalyst will enable deuterium (a hydrogen isotope) to be introduced at low temperatures (0°C) in a targeted and efficient manner into selected molecules.

The challenge is twofold: to reduce costs and improve selectivity in order to meet the needs of the pharmaceutical, medical diagnostics and high-tech materials industries. The market for deuterated compounds, estimated at €1 billion by 2033, could thus become more accessible and sustainable.

PRELUDE builds on the advances made in the ERC NanoFLP project, where Sophie Carenco demonstrated the effectiveness of these nanocatalysts for hydrogenation. With this new project, she is embarking on a key step: moving from the laboratory to a more mature technology..

Stratégie de deutération sélective à la surface de nanoparticules de phosphure de nickel.
Selective deuteration strategy on the surface of nickel phosphide nanoparticles. © Sophie Carenco, 2026

The BIFFTANNEN project is led by Sophie Carenco

Sophie Carenco is CNRS senior researcher at the Centre interdisciplinaire de nanoscience de Marseille (CINaM, Aix-Marseille Université / CNRS).

Read the full profile of Sophie Carenco