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Big Data and the European Commission: Call for Project Proposals.

by Roberto V. Zicari on July 15, 2011

I thought that this information is of interest for the data management community:

The European Commission has a budget for funding projects in the area of Intelligent Information Management.
It is currently seeking Project Submissions in this area.

It is not always easy to understand the official documents published by the European Commission… Therefore I tried to develop a set of easy-to-read questions/answers for whose of you who might be interested to know more.

Hope it helps

RZV

– What is it?

The European Commission has a budget for funding projects in the area of Intelligent Information Management.

– Which Program is it?:

Formally the Program is called: “Work Programme 2011-2012 of the FP7 Specific Programme ‘Cooperation’, Theme 3, ICT – Information and Communication Technologies”, which has been published on 19 July 2010.

The Work Programme contains in Challenge 4: ‘Technologies for Digital Content and Languages’ the objective ICT-2011.4.4 – Intelligent Information Management.

The objective ICT 2011-4.4 is part of call 8, which is expected to be published July 26, 2011.

– What kind of projects is the European Commission looking to support?

Projects that develop and test new technologies to manage and exploit extremely large volumes of data, with real time capabilities whenever this is relevant. Projects must be the joint work of consortia of partners.
It is very important that at least one member of your consortium be willing and able to make available the large volumes of data needed to test your ideas.

– What kind of support is the EU giving to accepted project proposals?

Depends on the type of partner and the type of proposals. For the most common type of proposal, up to 75% of direct costs for research institutions and small or medium enterprises.

– Why should I submit a proposal?

To join other talented people to solve a problem that you couldn’t solve alone and with your own resources.

– What are the benefits for me and/or for my organization to participate?

Funding is a clear benefit but it should be thought as a means to real end, which is the benefit of advancing the state of the art (for scientific or business objectives) working with people from all over Europe who have very strong skills complementary to yours.

– What is required if the proposal is accepted?

Entering a grant agreement with the European Commission, committing to an agreed plan of work, opening your work to the evaluation of peers selected by the Commission, periodically reporting your costs using agreed standards, being open to audits throughout the duration of the project and for a few years afterwards.

– How do I qualify to participate?

The full rules for participation (which classify countries in various categories with different types of access to the programme) are available here.
Most participants are legal entities established in the EU.

– How can I participate?

You need to become part of an eligible consortium (see again rules for participation above) and submit a proposal that addresses the specific requirements of the call.

– When is the deadline?

Expected to be 17 January 2012 17:00 Brussels time. Please refer to the official text of the call when it is published.

– How do I submit a proposal?

You need to fill the forms and submit your proposal using the submission system .

– Can I see other proposals submitted in the past?

This is not really possible because the Commission has an obligation of confidentiality to past submitters.

– Can I see some projects funded by the EU in the past in the same area?

Certainly. Please visit content-knowledge/projects_en.

– How do I get more info?

Further details on the scope of the call, individual research lines and indicative budget are provided in the Work Programme 2011-2012.

You can also write to: infso-e2@ec.europa.eu

Note: These calls are highly competitive. It is thus important that your idea be really innovative and that your plans for implementing and testing it be really concrete and really credible. It is also important for you to find the right partners and to work with them as a team. This requires a joint vision based on shared objective.
This means in turn that you will need to try to figure out how your skills can help others as hard as you will try to figure out who could help you with what you want to do.

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2 Comments Leave one →
  1. Jan de Meer permalink

    dear Roberto, to prepare a proposal in this area seems promising because recently I started to work on a Formal Business Management/Data Model (a script is available written in German, because we did present it to the last year’s conference GI JT’10 Leipzig.) It does not 100% fit to the objectives of handling large DBs but in my opinion could easily be adapted to. Thus I would be interested to become able to continue to complete the FBM Model and to adopt also new promising objectives.
    best regards, Jan

  2. Hi Jan
    I encourage you to consider submitting a proposal then. What you would need to do then is to look for adequate partners. Best in my opinion is if you can find at least one partner who has already some experience with EC projects and is familiar with the process of project submissions .
    You can have a look at past projects funded by the EC for example at: http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/content-knowledge/projects_en.html
    You`ll find plenty of contacts.

    Hope it helps
    Roberto

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