Open Call

RO NCC and NL NCC offer the opportunity to the entities in the private sector to use high-level infrastructure in order to develop or test their applications and products.

Short description

The present call for proposals offers access to industry open R&D that requires large-scale resources or that requires more frequent access to substantial computing and storage resources providing computing hours based on the needs of each project. This access mode distributes resources from Snellius supercomputer.

In addition, technical assistance will be provided in order to operate the Snellius infrastructure via requested meetings or regular service desk consultation.

General objective

This call for proposals focuses on experiments carried out by SMEs or start-ups that present their ideas and work plans built around the use of HPC infrastructure for innovation in their chosen area of activity (e.g. aeronautics, agriculture, medicine, manufacturing, energy, transport, maritime, engineering, data analytics, weather.)
The projects should be designed to enable progress and innovation in the respective domain.
Proposals to address business challenges from SMEs in a variety of application areas will be accepted

Expected outcome

Identify all necessary actors for the effective and efficient execution of the experiment and the demonstration of the impact on SME business challenges through the use of HPC systems or advanced HPC services.
Define the HPC computing resources necessary, possibly using computing resources provided directly by NL NCC.
Declare any data protection issues that might impact its proposed work plan
Define data/information protection mechanisms addressing these in the framework of Romanian and Netherlands law, and ensure that the operation of the experiment adheres to these.
Generate publishable success stories based on solutions for the SME’s real-world problems that clearly identify the resulting business benefits.
Align, where appropriate, with regional priorities, such as industrial specialization areas.

Grant

Opening: The call will be open as a single open call to access the HPC infrastructure
Start date: 22 June 2023
Type of access: The allocations are granted for one (1) year maximum
Timeline:

Communication of allocation decision
Allocation period for awarded proposals
Submission of Final Reports - Within three (3) months after the completion of the project

Electronic submission: The applicants will send to eurocc@ici.ro, one PDF document compliant with the instructions on the proposal structure given in the following document:HPC Innovation for Romanian SMEs open call.pdf
Fill in this document and save it as a PDF Template_HPC Call and then send it to us
More information on call details, eligibility, assessment criteria and obligations for applicants and for awarded projects can be found in the Documents.

Call details

1.Eligibility Criteria

Scientists and researchers from industry/SMEs/start-ups can apply for access to Snellius supercomputer resources provided that the access is devoted solely for open R&D purposes.

2.Assessment Criteria and the Scoring System

All proposals will go through a selection process carried out by RO NCC and NL NCC.

The proposals are evaluated according to the following aspects:

the impact of the use case on the development of the society
the complexity of the use case
the future development perspective after the usage of HPC infrastructure
the consistency of the results

The results of the evaluation will be published on the RO NCC website.

Proposal structure

Proposals will be submitted in English.
Each proposal must comprise 2 parts:

-Part 1 (containing administrative information) and

-Part 2 (containing the description of the proposal)

The applicants (Principal Investigator) can only have one proposal awarded.

The structure of the proposal - Part 2 (and indicative length per section) should be as follows:

I. Summary (1/2 page)

II. Description of the domain and main activities (1 pages)

III. Relevance of the chosen use case, innovation aspects, potential impact, benefits, and exploitation plans (1 pages)

IV. Motivation for the need to use HPC infrastructure (1/2 page)

V. Main objectives and results (2 page)

VI. The impact of results on society (1 page)

VII. Intermediate Deliverables – progress reports, success stories, use cases, etc.

Obligations for awarded projects

Reporting

The winning proposal/proposals will be supported by RO NCC and NL NCC in order to achieve their goals and successfully implement their chosen use case.
After the successful implementation of the chosen scenario, the results will be published as a success story on RO NCC and NL NCC portals and also will be disseminated on EUROCC network channels.
Applicants must acknowledge support received from EuroCC Project in all publications/marketing materials that describe results obtained using EuroCC resources for which access was granted.