As SICSA develops, we need to adapt to changes in technology, theory, funding opportunities and the interests of the SICSA academic communities. As such we have allocated funding for a number of new SICSA short-themes, which will run for an initial period of 12 months. A total of £8000 has been allocated for the new SICSA short-themes and the SICSA Directors aim to grant this as flexibly as possible, according to the volume and quality of applications received.
For this call we invite researchers working within the following areas to submit a short proposal to admin@www.sicsa.ac.uk by no later than Monday 12th October 2015:
• Data Science
• Smart Tourism
• Cyber-Security
• Cyber-Physical Systems
• Social Computation (e.g. Social Collective Intelligence, Collective Awareness Platforms, Collective Adaptive Systems)
This is not meant as an exhaustive list and the SICSA Directors agree to demonstrate flexibility as long as the questions below are fully answered within the proposal.
All proposals should cover the following topics:
1. Who is involved? The names and affiliations of the proposers, with a brief description of their background in the proposed area.
2. What will be done? A summary of the planned events, which academics, research groups and user groups will be involved within SICSA and from outside Scotland. Provide names of potential Distinguished Visiting Fellows who could contribute to the Theme. Document the world-class track record of the key SICSA groups cognate to the proposed area. Please note, that all planned activities must take place within the 12 month period if the proposal is accepted.
3. Why now? What is the opportunity being addressed? Is this an intellectual opportunity, as a new topic is emerging? Is it a funding opportunity where government, commercial or research council priorities are changing and SICSA institutions need to better understand how their research strengths can play a role?
4. What outcomes do you plan to achieve beyond the research meetings? (e.g. Joint papers, grant proposals, technical implementations, government policy changes etc.). Note that we can potentially also provide top-up funding from our PEER programme if proposers are working towards an EC funding bid.
5. Please provide an approximate budget for the short-theme over 12-months. Note that theme funding can only be used to pay for: workshop venue and catering; travel for external speakers to participate in workshops; travel for workshop organisers. In some circumstances, funding can be used for consumables but these would need to be justified within the proposal.
Please submit the proposal by 5pm on 12th October 2015 to admin@www.sicsa.ac.uk. If you would like to discuss the proposal in advance, please e-mail Stuart Anderson (SICSA Director) soa@staffmail.ed.ac.uk. It should be noted that there may be scope for proposals to be refined, especially if there are multiple bids in related areas.