Harvest Programme Call – Spring 2011

Do you have a good idea for some really cool software, useful and/or
fun for people out there, but you are missing the team, the money, or
the place?

This announcement is for you: read it carefully!

PASCAL2 invites submissions of proposals for Harvest Projects

Important dates

– Expression of intention to submit: May 15, 2011
– Deadline proposal submissions: May 29, 2011
– Notification of acceptance: June 24, 2011

Inquiries: anytime.

There are many innovative things we would be able to do, but we never
find the time, we don’t have the money, students/programmers are
needed and hard to find. Still it would be real fun to devise a smart
code, to see people using it, and to have your name on the Pascal Hall
of Fame 🙂 The Pascal Harvest Programme aims at making it possible,
easy, and rewarded. The main idea behind Harvest is: put together in a
room a team for long enough to produce an innovative software for a
real application. PASCAL2 will pick up the bills.

Sounds interesting? Please check out all you need to know on the
programme website:

(Internal) http://pascallin2.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Programmes/HA/
(External) http://www.pascal-network.org/?q=node/19

For this call we are open to all three scenarios in:

http://pascallin2.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Programmes/HA/harvest_webpage.html#IP
http://www.pascal-network.org/?q=node/19#ipr

————————————————————————

A Harvest project proposal should address the following points in 4-8
pages:

* Problem description: what is the project going to do? Why is it
interesting? Why is Machine Learning relevant?
* Specification and validation. How do we assess performance?
* Expected staffing, location and duration. How many persons will be
needed? For how long?
* Milestones, time-line.
* Requested funding.
* Content of the training, if any, that will be delivered to
participants.

An example proposal can be downloaded from the programme website.
Notice that for this Call we do not expect the team to be
already formed.

Proposals will be evaluated by independent experts. Criteria used in
the evaluation will be:

* Application interest: is this going to be useful to someone?
* State of the art: is the problem still challenging for
scientific/technical/other reasons? Not challenging still not done
yet? Might it lead also to a good paper?
* Impact outside PASCAL: will anyone outside the machine-learning,
optimization and statistics community like it? Can this be viewed
as a generic proof of principle? Of what?
* Training: will junior participants learn interesting and useful
things?
* Management and planning: is the project going to deliver on its
promises?
* Timeliness: can you make this happen soon?

Other things being equal, preference will be given to projects related
to robotics or to cognitive systems, or related to ongoing challenge
or PASCAL Thematic Programmes.

An email stating the intention to submit a proposal should be
addressed to Nicola dot Cancedda at xrce dot xerox dot com and sebag
at lri dot fr by May 15, 2011. Actual submissions should be done
through the PASCAL2 Harvest Programme page by May 29, 2011:

http://pascallin2.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Programmes/HA/Request/

In the meanwhile, prospective proposers are most welcome to create
wiki pages under:

http://pascallin2.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Wiki/HarvestWikiHome

These pages can be used to discuss ideas, attract potential
participants, find a nice host, share interests, divide and conquer a
problem, …

If you have an exciting idea for a project but you are missing the
infrastructure to host it, write it on the wiki and let the programme
organizers know: PASCAL2 is a large network, and maybe someone can
find a place for you. Proposing, organizing, and hosting a Harvest
project will constitute an important contribution to PASCAL2. All such
activity will be taken into account when allocating site funding in
subsequent years.

For all inquiries please write to Nicola dot Cancedda at xrce dot
xerox dot com and sebag at lri dot fr.