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The Grants & Information Office

ARC Special Research Initiatives

This page has been put together as a summary, guide, and information source for all of Murdoch's researchers who are thinking of putting in a Special Research Initiatives application for ARC funding. Although it is not essential, you might like to look at the ARC's website, where you can view the summaries and download the forms and guidelines.

The ARC takes a proactive role in identifying specific initiatives to be undertaken in this scheme. Initiatives may be identified by the ARC in consultation with institutions, professional organisations and peak bodies representing higher education communities. Initiatives may result from ARC Discipline Cluster Reviews or other discipline research strategies, from reviews of National Competitive Grants Program (NCGP) outcomes in a particular field or from other reviews or reports of a similar nature. The ARC expects that some initiatives may be identified by the ARC College of Experts in the course of its work on other NCGP schemes. In providing advice to government on Australian research, the ARC may identify initiatives to be funded under SRI.

Objectives:
The objective of the SRI scheme is to support high-quality research which will assist in advancing Australia’s research excellence to be globally competitive and deliver benefits to the community. This extends, but is not limited, to supporting research-related activities which will respond to emerging opportunities or changing priorities.

Specifically SRI funding aims to support:

• co-operative activities among researchers;
• co-operative development of national and international linkages;
• co-operative development of innovative research areas;
• rapid response to contingencies, e.g. field work at an erupting volcano;
• activities aimed at building the scale and focus of research and research training;
• other activities which the ARC judges to be consistent with the scheme's objectives.

If you have any questions or are not clear on any of the following points, then please do not hesitate to contact Kellie O'Toole on ext 6429 or Jennifer Davis on ext 6373

E-research

Background
Funding opportunity in the area of communication and information technology is now available via the ARC's Special Research Initiatives Scheme for e-Research. The ARC plans to conduct a one-year pilot scheme to support e-Research, to encourage and fund open exchange of information and sharing of resources, making better use of existing ICT infrastructure, by providing resources to overcome initial barriers to the adoption of e-Research methods across all disciplines.

e-Research involves new capacity for large-scale national or global collaboration in research. It entails harnessing the capacity of information and communication technology (ICT) systems, particularly the power of high-capacity distributed computing, and the vast distributed storage capacity fuelled by the reducing cost of memory, to study complex problems across the research landscape. It has a number of components:

• access to and sharing of very large data collections
• access to and sharing of distributed sensing systems (water levels in a catchment, for example)
• complex simulations, e.g., simulated motor vehicle accidents
• high-performance visualisation , e.g., in virtual reality environments, and
• virtual research organisations involving researchers distributed geographically

In particular, this scheme will support tool development and tool creation which lead to enhanced use of ICT resources in a variety of fields. The ARC particularly encourages proposed activities leading to collaboration across institutional and disciplinary boundaries by making better use of ICT infrastructure, data sets, and other similar resources.

Funding Scheme
This scheme aims to foster both new collaborative efforts and existing collaborative efforts across disciplines and institutions, harnessing ICT resources to facilitate the development of innovative research endeavours. The e-Research Support scheme will fund activities in the following categories:

• Exploration of collaboration among researchers in multi-disciplinary teams, preferably including computer scientists, information engineers, or information technologists, leading to better utilisation of existing ICT infrastructure or enabling better computer/data resource sharing. This may take the form of focussed workshops, and/or short-term visits of appropriate research personnel, leading to better utilisation of existing ICT/data resources.
  
• Software tool creation and software tool development to facilitate better access, and utilisation of existing ICT infrastructure enabling better computer/data resource sharing.
  
• Project funding for demonstration purposes and feasibility studies, where appropriate, in the application of grid computing technologies.

Preference will be given to proposals which can demonstrate that they can enhance cross-institutional collaboration, leading directly to better utilisation or sharing of ICT infrastructure, data sets or other similar resources. Collaboration with Australian industries, or international groups of researchers, in multi-disciplinary projects in better utilising the existing ICT infrastructure is encouraged, but is not mandatory. Industry participation would need to demonstrate the provision of resources to the proposal. Proposals in innovative application of the Access Grid technology, collaborative visualisation, exploration of remote instrumentation and/or sensor networks are also encouraged.

It is expected that funding will be primarily used for personnel, e.g., programmers, project administration. The scheme will not fund meetings which do not have outcomes leading to better utilisation of existing ICT infrastructure. The scheme will not fund hardware or equipment purchase.

Funding awarded by the ARC for a successful proposal under this scheme will be for one year only (apart from post-funding workshop costs described below), and will normally be between $30,000 and $100,000. In exceptional cases, the maximum amount awarded may be up to $250,000 for one year only. The ARC may partially fund competitive proposals, and may encourage collaborative and/or complementary development of proposed activities, possibly with research workers who may be funded by other agencies.

Funding must be used only for purposes that are consistent with the SRI Funding Rules, this Invitation, and the Funding Agreement.

Common Set of Software
In order to enhance collaborative efforts we encourage the use of a common set of software, where possible. Where software tools are to be developed or deployed, it is desirable that projects make use of a common middleware/software layer. Preference will be given to projects that target Globus (www.globus.org), with a specific preference for version 2.4. If applicants wish to make use of a different or no middleware layer, they should justify their choice.

This requirement does not apply to proposals which do not involve the deployment or development of software tools, but such proposals will need to adequately justify their relevance to e-Research.