Multilateral research funding
Participating countries in the G8 Research Councils' Initiative on Multilateral Research Funding. © DFG/Jörg Schneider???aural:Bildende???
On 1 February, the G8 Heads of Research Organizations (G8-HORCs) announced their first joint call for proposals for multilateral research projects in their participating countries. The programme’s medium-term goal is to establish a large pool of multilateral projects which can be supported by the national programmes of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and its partner organisations at any time. This first call for proposals encourages scientists from Germany, France, Japan, Canada, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States to not only collaborate with existing scientific research groups on a bilateral or trilateral basis, but also create entirely new and productive multilateral research constellations.
The first call for proposals focuses on the high-performance computing power expected from the world’s fastest supercomputers in the coming decade. Experts estimate that “exascale” computers will be capable of processing calculations up to a thousand times faster than today’s most powerful mainframes. Creating such computing power and using it efficiently is an immense challenge that conventional methods cannot meet. Rather, the G8 programme aims to support multilateral research projects specialising in the study and use of “exascale”-compatible application software so that the available computing power can be effectively used for natural and social scientific simulations.
In the pilot phase, the participating organisations will jointly announce a call for proposals with a different thematic focus each year to encourage widespread multilateral collaboration. After submitting a brief preliminary proposal, the review committee may request a full application, which is then peer- reviewed by the organisation in whose country the scientific
project coordinator is based.
Contact: German Research Foundation, Dr. Jörg Schneider Joerg.Schneider@dfg.de
More information: www.dfg.de/en/service/press
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