Netherlands eScience Center - funding opportunities (€ 500,000)

The Netherlands eScience Center (NLeSC) invites researchers to apply for funding and support. Currently submissions are being accepted for Path-Finding Projects and for the so called Large Projects: Disruptive Technologies and Accelerating Scientific Discovery. Deadline for Path-Finding Projects is July 1 2015, for Large projects the manditory submission deadline of pre-proposals is June 2, 2015.

The purpose of the call Accelerating Scientific Discovery (ASDI) is to enable domain scientists, working in application fields of Environment & Sustainability, Humanities & Social Sciences, Life Sciences & eHealth, or Physics & Beyond, to address compute-intensive and/or data-driven problems within their research.
Successful proposals will pursue new scientific domain challenges and enhance and accelerate the process of scientific discovery within the field of application. To achieve this, the proposals will be characterized by the usage, adaptation, and integration of eScience methods and tools.

The purpose of the Disruptive Technologies (DTEC) call is to support computer and data scientists in the research and development of novel eScience technologies and software, in areas such as Optimized Data Handling, Big Data Analytics, or Efficient Computing, driven by a direct demand from (multiple) research disciplines. Successful proposals will deliver stable eScience instruments in the form of compute kernels, interfaces, libraries, platforms, or scientific workflows with potential to enhance and accelerate scientific breakthroughs in a variety of research domains.

Projects awarded in the ASDI call primarily will constitute collaborations between Domain Science and NLeSC, whereas projects awarded in the DTEC call primarily will constitute collaborations between ICT Science and NLeSC. In this call Domain Science provides use cases. ICT Science may provide technology/software in the ASDI call. Grants in both calls may be requested for a total budget of up to € 500,000, and a maximum project duration of 48 months. The deadline for the submission of full proposals is September 8, 2015.

In addition to the Large projects, NLeSC facilitates smaller eScience initiatives, reffered to as Path-Finding projects. These projects are intended to provide the opportunity to rapidly meet short-term scientific challenges, serve as a pilot for future research projects, address immediate technological goals, or investigate the potential to initiate full projects. They are supported to the value of € 50,000 and are available constantly with proposal evaluation undertaken three times a year.

NLeSC receives an annual budget from NWO and SURF, the majority of which is provided to Dutch academics as subsidy in the form of cash and the in kind provision of eScience Research Engineers. The awarding of both cash and expertise makes NLeSC unique, balancing the role of both funder and collaborator.