Applications Closed

Overview and Objectives

As part of Google's growing efforts to support excellent research in Portuguese academia, Google has made available to FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Foundation for Science and Technology) credits in Google CloudPlatform (GCP) worth 1M USD (one million United States Dollars) for the year 2023. FCT is therefore opening this Call for Advanced Computing Projects to support research and development projects in the preferred areas of "Natural Language Processing" and "Ethics in Artificial Intelligence", as well as other scientific areas. Detailed information about the Call is available on the FCT website.

Recipients and Eligibility

They are beneficiaries, individually or in co-promotion:

• R&D institutions (Research and Development)
• The Collaborative Labs;
• The technological interface centers;
• Science and technology infrastructures;
• Science and technology networks and consortia;
• Private non-profit institutions that have R&D activities as their main objective;
• 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 and wishing to develop advanced computing projects in any scientific area.

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

• occur in the scope of pre-competitive research and innovation, for which the goods or services that are the subject of that research or innovation have not yet been assigned a commercial value.
• not to exceed, for all applications of this type, 50% of the total computing budget to be allocated in this Call.

How to Apply

Applications must be submitted in the English language and on a separate form at:

Computational model

• Cloud Computing

Preferred Areas

• A minimum of 80% of the resources are reserved for the areas of Natural Language Processing and Ethics in artificial intelligence.
• A minimum of 20% of the resources are reserved for the remaining scientific areas using the Google Cloud Platform offering in artificial intelligence and data analytics algorithms, or more if there are not enough applications to fill the quota mentioned in the previous point.

If the resources requested in the aforementioned areas do not exhaust the computing resources available at Call, the remaining part can be allocated to any other areas.

Summary of access typologies

	Fixed Access	Variable Access
credits in 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
Google account mode	Instrumentless Account (no credit card and limited access)	Billing Ids & Safeguarding (with credit card for account activation)
access to GPUs	not	yes
resource consumption	after exhaustion of resources, the account closes automatically	allows you to activate invoicing backups2
reinforcements	not	yes

¹ According to Article 4 of Regulation 10/2022.

² In the Variable Access typology, the applicant associates a payment method with the Google account, such as a credit card number, even if the use of GCP will not generate payment requests in the context of this Call. This type of account makes it possible to set up a billing safeguard which consists of using the credits without charging the credit card used. It is the researcher's responsibility to set up this type of safeguard. The payment method (e.g. credit card) will only be requested by Google once the project has received FCT approval.

Selection Criteria

Under Article 14 and 15 of the Advanced Computing Project Regulations all applications received are treated according to the following criteria, which are densified and detailed in the evaluation guide:

• T1: Technical adequacy to the requested resources;
• T2: Computer resource 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 Regulations, the Notice of Opening of Call and the information available on the FCT website.

Contacts

Additional information and clarifications can be requested through the e-mail address: rncafccn.pt, indicating in the subject "FCT/CPCA-IAC/2023/01".