Applications closed

Overview and objectives

As part of Google's growing efforts to support excellent research in Portuguese academia, Google has made available to the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology credits in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) worth 1M USD (one million United States Dollars) for the year 2023. Therefore, FCT opens this Advanced Computing Projects Competition, to support research and development projects in the preferred areas of “Natural Language Processing” and “Ethics in Artificial Intelligence” and other scientific areas. Detailed information about the competition is available at FCT page.

Recipients and Eligibility

The following are beneficiaries, individually or in co-promotion:

• R&D (Research and Development) institutions
• Collaborative laboratories;
• Technological interface centers;
• Science and technology infrastructures;
• Science and technology networks and consortia;
• Private non-profit institutions whose main objective is R&D activities;
• Digital Innovation Hubs;
• Other public and private, non-profit institutions that develop or participate in research, development or innovation activities;
• Companies that develop advanced computing projects, in research, development or innovation activities.
• Individuals operating in Portugal who wish to develop advanced computing projects in any scientific field.

Regarding applications from companies as beneficiaries, advanced computing projects must:

• occur within the scope of pre-competitive research and innovation, the goods or services of which that research or innovation are the subject of do not yet have a commercial value attributed to them.
• not exceed the total computing budget to be allocated in this competition for all applications of this type.

How to Enter

Applications must be submitted in English language and in a specific form at:

Computational model

• Cloud computing

Preferred areas

• A minimum of 80% of resources are reserved for areas of Natural language processing and Ethics in artificial intelligence;​​​​​​​
• A minimum of 20% of resources are reserved for the remaining scientific areas using the offer Google Cloud Platform in artificial intelligence and data analysis algorithms, or more, if there are not enough applications to fill the quota referred to in the previous point.

If the resources requested in the previously mentioned areas do not exhaust the computing resources available in the competition, the remaining part may be allocated to any other areas.

Summary of access typologies

	Fixed Access	Variable Access
credits at GCP	25,000 USD	up to 150,000 USD
duration	365 days or until credits expire	365 days or until credits expire
support1	Institutional or Individual	Institutional
account type Google	Instrumentless Account (no credit card and limited access)	Billing IDs & Safeguarding (with credit card for account activation)
access to GPUs	no	Yes
consumption of resources	after exhaustion of resources, the account closes automatically	allows you to activate billing safeguards2
reinforcements	no	Yes

¹ Under the terms of article 4 of Regulation no. 10/2022.

² In the Variable Access category, the candidate associates a payment method with their Google account, such as a credit card number, even if the use of GCP will not generate payment requests within the context of this competition. This type of account allows for a billing safeguard that allows the use of credits without charging the credit card used. It is the researcher's responsibility to configure this type of safeguard. The payment method (e.g., credit card) will only be requested by Google after the project receives FCT approval.

Selection criteria

Under Articles 14 and 15 of the Regulation for Advanced Computing Projects All applications received are processed according to the following criteria, which are detailed in the evaluation guide:

• T1: Technical adequacy to the requested resources;
• T2: Computational resources application plan, reasonableness and work plan;
• T3: Technological or scientific relevance of the advanced computing project.

Supporting documentation

No information published on this page replaces or overrides the Regulation, Notice of Opening of the Competition and the information provided on the website FCT.

Contacts

Additional information and clarifications can be requested via the email address: rncafccn.pt, indicating in the subject “FCT/CPCA-IAC/2023/01”.