Academy NIDS Call 2018

The 3rd Academy's call was closed on April 5, 2018

The overall intention of the Academy "Networks, Information, and Digital Society" is to support research excellence in the fields of communication networks, processing and modeling of digital information and to better understand the evolutions of society induced by the digital revolution.

Three major ambitions guide the projects of the academy: 

  • Designing and testing communication networks of the future, combining high performance (e.g., innovative, wireless photonic devices) with security and energy efficiency. In addition to these new types of infrastructure, new distributed applications are covered enabling the: 1. storage, transmission, and indexing of big data; 2. management of virtualized computing and storage platforms; and 3. manipulation of smart content.
  • Developing UCA excellence in the digital sciences. This involves maintaining and strengthening fundamental expertise to manage, process, and interpret data of potentially large size or volume, or which are distributed. The goal is to develop program and data exchange reliability and security, as well as to model and simulate, at different scales, problems from physics, biology, and medicine. In addition, the Academy will play an important role in the MSI (Center of Modeling, Simulation, and Interactions). Human-computer interaction and decision aid, which are integral parts of robotic systems, are also of interest.
  • Improving our understanding of the societal changes related to digitalization, particularly through the analysis of the impact of technological change and the role of physical artefacts (such as connected objects) in this transformation. More precisely, it is worth analyzing how digitalization impacts the functioning of society, economies, organizations, social links, and legal principles.

Objective and structure of the call

The objective of this third internal call of the academy is twofold :

  • To support ambitious transdisciplinary research projects  combining expertise in ICT and in Social & Human Sciences
  • To promote collaborative, international research projects enabling structuring effects at the academy's and UCA levels 

According to this twofold objective, the present call is structured in two, separated parts : 

Call 1: Transdisciplinary (Including salary) 

This call aims to support transdisciplinary and ambitious research work in the Academy’s scientific areas. Funding will be provided to 3-year projects, which include a doctoral thesis. The depth and quality of the transdisciplinary research will be considered as the major selection criterion. In particular, projects combining expertise in computer science/electronics and expertise in the humanities and social sciences (management/law/economics) and/or in art will be given priority. The application must include funding for:

  • a 3-year Ph.D. thesis,
  • travel expenses, paid internships, and purchase of equipment up to a maximum of 30 k€,
  • (Optional) an engineer or postdoctoral fellow for a maximum of one year.

The objective is to fund 4 projects with this call (corresponding to 4 thesis grants).

Call 2: International Reach (Without salary)

The purpose of this call is to fund equipment, travel, paid internships, and other necessary resources (with the exception of salaries) to carry out research projects. The requested funding should be at least 20 k€, over 1 or 2 years. The structuring aspect of the project and its international reach are the two main selection criteria for projects in this call.

A principal investigator (PI) can apply to both calls provided that the two, submitted projects are distinct and on different topics. The submitted projects in each call may or may not be based on prior, existing projects already funded by the Academy. 

Coordinator and consortium

The principal investigator of the project should be a permanent member of one of the laboratories or research groups associated with the Academy. In addition to the PI’s laboratory, the project should involve at least one secondary laboratory, institution, association, or company from the Alpes-Maritimes region.

Multi-Academy Projects

If the project demonstrably involves several Academies, a request for funding can be made to several academies. However, it should be noted that if the launch and closing schedule is identical to five academies of excellence, the orientation of the calls may differ from one Academy to another. In this sense, it is not a common call; the prerogatives are different according to each call of each Academy. It is therefore necessary for Principal Investigator who wish to submit a project within the scope of several academies and who wish to benefit from funding from several academies, I) to carefully learn the content of the calls from the five Academies; II) to submit a single application to the Reference Academy (corresponding to the most appropriate one thematically), to indicate the amount of funding requested from each Academy involved, III) to prefigure in the description of the submitted project all the prerequisites of the different calls (eligibility criteria) and the link with each Academy.

Funding and Duration 

  • Call 1: The requested funding will cover a doctoral thesis grant for 3 years, missions, hardware, software packages, internship grants, or other resources necessary to the implementation of the research project up to a maximum of 30 k €, and recruitment of an engineer or a postdoc for a period of 1 year maximum. Four doctoral thesis will be funded in total. The budget available for this call is 380 000 euros + 4 PhD grants. 
  • Call 2: The requested funding should be at least 20 k€, over 1 or 2 years. The funding available for this call is 280 k€.

Evaluation

The Academy’s Scientific council (SC) will rank the submitted projects (first and second calls) and, on the basis of 3 expert reviews, including at least one from an external expert, provide a detailed opinion of the projects.

The project’s quality and transdisciplinary character will be the main selection criteria for Call 1.

The project’s structuring aspect, international reach, and scientific excellence will be the main criteria for evaluating Call 2.

The Scientific Council may interview project PIs from Call 1 during the evaluation phase. The steering committee will select the projects based on the Scientific Council’s evaluation.

Follow-up of selected projects

For the projects selected, a report will be requested at the end of the project. The results (publications, demonstrations, animation days, ...) should be visible from the website of the academy.

For the projects issued from the call 1, a presentation on the project progress in front of steering committee and / or SC will be delivered at the meetings  by the principal investigator on M6, M18 and M24.

Proposal preparation and submission

The submitted proposal should use the template file for each call available on the Nuxeo web site.  It may be written in French or English.

Online submission through the Nuxeo calls plateform : 

The deadline for submitting the projects is noon, 5 April 2018. 

Contacts: