Implementing digital services to empower neuroscience research for health and brain inspired technology via EBRAINS
HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions
Basic Information
- Identifier
- HORIZON-INFRA-2022-SERV-01-01
- Programme
- Research infrastructure services to support health research and accelerate the digital transformation (2022)
- Programme Period
- 2021 - 2027
- Status
- Closed (31094503)
- Opening Date
- June 1, 2022
- Deadline
- September 21, 2022
- Deadline Model
- single-stage
- Budget
- €38,000,000
- Keywords
- Digital AgendaNeuroinformaticsEOSC and FAIR dataNeuroimaging and computational neuroscienceNeurosciences (including psychophysiology)Brain researchArtificial IntelligenceBrain simulation and modelingneuroscienceartificial intelligence
Description
Project results are expected to contribute to all the following outcomes:
- integrated multi-disciplinary collaborative tools and services widely serving the European neuroscientific community, providing them with FAIR data indexing and archival, multilevel data mining and modelling/simulation of brain functions, and empowering workflows for reproducible research;
- a rich collection of multilevel human brain models, atlases and workflows, directly supporting the research and development for personalised brain medical treatments e.g. target binding drugs, precise neuro-stimulation positioning and guided surgery, regarding brain diseases such as epilepsy, Parkinson, consciousness disorders, or rare or multi-factor diseases;
- a comprehensive set of cognitive brain model scaffolds and associated modular / large-size neuromorphic and neurorobotic facilities for assisting the design and validation of applicative cognitive technologies benefitting from neurosciences latest knowledge, as enablers for autonomous and adaptive robotics approaches that use fast sensory processing and decision-making capabilities;
- supplementary population of EBRAINS facilities with multidisciplinary services/applications that answer well-identified new neuroscience related S&T needs, in correlation with national and European research priorities for neuroscience, brain medicine and cognitive-technologies;
- integration of EBRAINS with EOSC and linkage with common European data spaces in the life science and health sector;
- better-aligned national investments in neuroscience across Europe, building on the Member States’ and Associated Countries’ specialised competence centres, which in turn will help creating additional synergies and enabling further research activities around the EBRAINS services.
Building on the EBRAINS architecture and base facilities developed under Horizon 2020, the scope of this action is to:
1. To implement a user-friendly service infrastructure along the principles of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) to widely serve the research communities in neurosciences, brain medicine and brain-inspired cognitive technologies. This includes the following dimensions:
- Enabling the EBRAINS research infrastructure digital facilities supporting neuroscience dedicated tools and services, with a high quality of service including robustness, security, scalability, flexibility, usability and user-centricity. This includes a sustainable system for allocation and management of data capacities and of simulation and computing service resources.
- Establishing in-depth collaboration with teams from other European research and testing infrastructures and of EOSC, in order to ensure efficiency and harmonisation, e.g. regarding Authorisation, Authentication and Identification (AAI), Persistent Identifiers (PID), discovery ontologies and API for both services and data.
- Directly interfacing with the European HPC capacities towards exascale, deployed in EuroHPC and capitalising on the FENIX[1] developments for big-data integration and interactive use.
- Delivering an efficient Europe-wide service to researchers, based on promoting excellence and innovation, and supporting users’ digital experiments with the assistance of high-level support teams and feedback mechanisms, and guiding communities in developing novel software solutions that build on the EBRAINS base offering.
- Deploying an open metrics framework to assess the EBRAINS performances reached, the efficiency of the facilities offered in particular regarding the human-based services, and the uptake especially regarding the enabled science excellence and related results and the medical and technological innovation empowerment.
2. To develop, integrate in EBRAINS, and operate:
- Constantly improving open science services/applications that respond to up-to-date and upcoming identified needs of the neuroscientific community, with a co-design approach and in-depth engagement with scientific, medical and industrial stakeholders and the establishment of an appropriate and transparent prioritisation mechanism. This includes ensuring openness to other research groups and new applications; reaching out to scientific and industrial communities, including with tailored training and skills development programmes.
- The deployment of complementary S&T services from regional or national competence nodes, supporting and enriching the cloud-based deliveries and facilitating the sharing of produced data and use of national resources.
In addition to the above, EBRAINS should open its approaches to other communities, going beyond neuroscience, for example by supporting compute-intensive simulation to identify candidate drugs addressing new disease targets in other explicit medical domains where this approach is justified.
The financial support to third parties mechanism (see specific call conditions) can be used to design and develop new services (under item 2) and/or to facilitate the co-design approaches and/or the targeted involvement of broader stakeholders, user communities and competence nodes.
Cross-cutting Priorities:Artificial Intelligence
Digital Agenda
EOSC and FAIR data
[1]https://fenix-ri.eu
Destination & Scope
Inclusive access to the services provided by research infrastructures in the European Research Area is essential both for the quality of the research produced and for the training of researchers. Easy access to high-quality resources, based on clear conditions and with appropriate funding, is an important and attractive feature of the EU research and innovation system, allowing researchers to move within or from outside Europe to perform their research. An open landscape of RIs in Europe contributes to the circulation of skills and attraction of talents and promotes European cohesion.
The support under past Framework Programmes of trans-national and virtual access to RIs has opened to research communities across Europe state-of-the-art services and resources for their scientific activities. RIs are key players in the generation of knowledge and drivers of scientific excellence in Europe. In conjunction with the European Open Science Cloud and Technology Infrastructures, they are crucial enablers of research and innovation. The provision of services at EU level has been so far mainly organised per types of infrastructures or disciplines. The complexity and urgency of the socio-economic and environmental transition that Europe is facing requires interdisciplinary approaches and a new challenge-driven provision of customised services able to accelerate the pace of the research cycle and the delivery of solutions.
Actions under this destination will provide efficient and customised research infrastructure services to drive and enable the transition toward a sustainable Europe and a prosperous economy. RI services (e.g. access to unique scientific tools and facilities, samples provision, processing and analysis, data and modelling services) will be directed to support an effective and responsive health system and to accelerate the transition towards a green and digital future. Specific alignments and synergies with priorities in Pillar 2 will be developed and research infrastructure support will duly contribute to the identified missions and partnerships under Horizon Europe. At the same time, research infrastructures, which are key players in the generation of fundamental knowledge and drivers of scientific excellence in Europe, will also continue enabling the advancement of frontier knowledge in areas complementary to those addressed through a challenge-driven approach.
Proposals for topics under this destination should set out a credible pathway to contributing to several of the following impacts:
- Reinforced research infrastructures capacity to provide at scale and across the EU services to support excellent research to address societal challenges, and Horizon Europe missions and partnerships’ objectives;
- Enhanced and increased society’s long-term and consistent problem-solving capacity and evidence-based policy making in areas linked to health, and the green and digital transition, including a better understanding of socio-economic implications, through the provision of innovative, customised and efficient RI services;
- New discoveries and knowledge breakthroughs enabled by access provision to the best and in some cases unique state-of-the-art RIs;
- A new generation of researchers trained to optimally exploit all the essential and advanced tools for their research;
- Cross-fertilisation and a wider sharing of knowledge and technologies across disciplines and between academia and industry and businesses.
Eligibility & Conditions
1. Admissibility conditions: described in General Annex A of the Work Programme
Proposal page limits and layout: described in General Annex A of the Work Programme. Please refer to Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System.
2. Eligible countries: described in General Annex B of the Work Programme.
3. Other eligibility conditions: described in General Annex B of the Work Programme.
4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion: described in General Annex C of the Work Programme.
5. Evaluation and award:
- Award criteria, scoring and thresholds: Award criteria, scoring and thresholds are described in General Annex D of the Work Programme.
- Submission and evaluation processes: Submission and evaluation processes are described in General Annexes E and F of the Work Programme and in the Online Manual.
- Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement: Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement described in General Annex F of the Work Programme.
6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants: Described in General Annex G of the Work Programme.
Beneficiaries may provide financial support to third parties. The support to third parties can only be provided in the form of grants. The maximum amount to be granted to each third party is EUR 60 000 except for the actual development of the new services where it can be up to EUR 200 000 for each third party.
Call documents:
Standard application form (HE RIA, IA)
Standard evaluation form (HE RIA, IA)
HE General MGA v1.0 — MGA
Additional documents:
HE Main Work Programme 2021–2022 – 1. General Introduction
HE Main Work Programme 2021–2022 – 3. Research Infrastructures
HE Main Work Programme 2021–2022 – 13. General Annexes
HE Programme and Rules for Participation Regulation 2021/695
HE Specific Programme Decision 2021/764
EU Financial Regulation 2018/1046
Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment
EU Grants AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement
Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual
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