SCIENCE

Open Call Focus
The Open Call targets a spectrum of application areas, spanning the Arts & Humanities, Engineering, Health & Life Sciences, Economics and Financial Services, Natural Sciences, as well as Maths, Biology, Chemistry and Physics with application characteristics such as dynamic scaling requirements, peak demands and ubiquitous availability. Specifically VENUS-C aims to bring on board research groups that have operational and scientifically productive application software already running on platforms, whether commodity clusters, HPC clusters, grids or clouds.

VENUS-C will work closely with the new pilots to determine what features and capabilities of Cloud computing environments are needed to support the type of computing exemplified by the selected pilots. To this end, the pilots will have access to the compute and storage resources of VENUS-C providers and seed funds to catalyse take-off. A total of €400,000 will be equally divided among successful candidates. 
VENUS-C will also provide technical support to address specific needs and enable users through innovative web-based and physical training. The pilot prototypes will have access to the VENUS-C infrastructure from July 2011 until May 2012 with a one-year extension to the Azure and other platforms until May 2013. Visibility will be ensured through focused VENUS-C dissemination activities. Successful candidates will join VENUS-C as subcontractors. The work developed during the scheme will remain part of the proposer’s Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).

Evaluation
The proposals will be evaluated by a co-ordinated team forming part of the VENUS-C project together with an External Scientific Board, comprising experts recruited from the international distributed computing arena. 

Important Dates
•    Open Call Launch: Tuesday 11 January 2011
•    Open Call closes: Monday 11 April 2011.
•    Evaluation notification: Monday 2 May 2011.

Procedure
The Open Call documentation contains the Application Form and details on the procedures, expectations and evaluation, the full list of scientific areas, eligible countries, and an FAQ. Open Call Proposals can be submitted on line (www.venus-c.eu) or via email (contact@venus-c.eu) after downloading and completing the Application Form. VENUS-C is committed to selecting the best possible pilots. Please feel free to contact us via email (contact@venus-c.eu) for any assistance.