Call for proposals to EuroCC2 Digital Innovation Flagship 2023

Proposal requirements & submission

A DIF project can be proposed by participants and/or consortium from HEIs, research groups, RPOs, enterprises and public sector organisations based in Ireland. Partners from outside Ireland may be included in an advisory capacity as stakeholders.

ICHEC welcomes proposals with complex computational and data-centric workflows targeting the emergent HPC & data platforms such as the EuroHPC supercomputers. Typically, these workflows would

• contain a number of coupled, inter-dependent computational components, for example, hybrid/coupled models, or machine learning workflows;
• encompass require data manipulation, such as data ingestion, assimilation, fusion or publishing;
• aim at automatic orchestration via a script or tool and should be executable in a well-defined environment like a container or notebook, to allow for portability. 

Characteristics to be targeted by the proposed application workflows could include

• hybrid modelling, model coupling, data assimilation, data fusion, digital twins, etc.;
• toolchain setup and acceleration;
• workload optimisation;
• workflow orchestration;
• environment/container/notebooks setup;
• build systems automation using CI/CD pipelines;
• data volume transfers to/from machine, overall and during a simulation;
• data sensitivity/security.

Each DIF project team will be composed of

• The applying participants and/or consortium composed of at least 1 FTE over the 12-month period.
• ICHEC technologists amounting to approximately 1 FTE over the 12-month period, composed of one or more personnel depending on the skills required (e.g. Platform Engineers, DevOps, Computation Scientists, System Administrators).

Submission form & deadline

Proposals should be sent by email to eurocc_ireland@ichec.ie using the template form [doc format] [odt format] as PDF files by CoB, July 28, 2023 (Friday).

Evaluation of proposals

The main points of the proposal’s evaluation will be to ensure:

1. innovation and novelty in the use of computational and data technologies.
2. relevance to national and European technology directions such as data spaces, digital twins, federated systems and services, model coupling, multi-modal data fusion. 
3. ability to leverage heterogeneous computing architectures and platforms. 
4. focus on data governance and security, and exploitation of results (data, models, workflows) by scientific, enterprise and public sector communities. 

The review process will focus on the following areas related to domain & technological case as well as project plan detailed in the application form:

• Domain impact: Creativity, originality and potential to be transformative.
• Project alignment with the future infrastructure, i.e., data management, containerisation, heterogeneous infrastructure, workflow orchestration, etc..
• Alignment and feasibility for the implementation on EuroHPC supercomputers.
• Quality of work plan and requested support from ICHEC experts.
• Composition and contribution from the PI & collaborators.
• Resources (computing, storage and personnel) requested and availability.

Proposals will be subject to technical review by ICHEC and scientific review by independent domain specialists.

An emphasis will be pleced on the development of novel technological methods and solutions for implementation on future data-centric computing systems.

Timeline

Deadline to receive proposals: July 28, 2023 (Friday)

Notification after review of proposals: August 18, 2023 (Friday)

Initiate selected DIF projects for execution: September 4, 2023 (Monday)

Estimated DIF projects completion: August 30, 2024 (Friday)

Contact

Write to eurocc_ireland@ichec.ie