Preparing an IST proposal as a Chinese partner – Some experiences from ICT Haiyan Yu Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Outline Background  About XtreemOS  About ICT  Grid ICT Preparing an IST proposal  Exploring Cooperation Opportunities  The Lifecycle of a Successful Proposal  The Structure of a Proposal  Writing Key Sections of a Proposal  Important Tips  Where to Get Information Conclusion

Background About XtreemOS About ICT Grid ICT

About XtreemOS (1) An IST call 5 proposal that has successfully passed the final evaluation  Design, implementation, evaluation and distribution of an open source Grid operating system with native support for virtual organizations  Enhancing Linux to manage very large and dynamic ensembles of cross-domain resources, targeting multiple platforms( PC, SMP, clusters, PDA and mobile phones)  Building the reference open source Grid OS, providing a production-quality alternative for current grid research prototypes

About XtreemOS (2) The success of XtreemOS proposal was largely attributed to : the Well Balanced International Consortium  A prestigious leader and a good coordinator (INRIA)  A reasonable composition of academic researchers, software vendors, and end users Academic partners: CNR, CCLRC, BSC, U. Ulm, U. Vrjie, ZIB, ICT (from China) Industrial partners: Mandriva, Red Flag (from China), NEC, SAP, XLAB, Telefonica+D, EADS, EDF, T6 the Hard Work of the consortium

About XtreemOS (3) Specific Contributions of Chinese Partners in XtreemOS: ICT  Design and implementation of OS-level user and resource management mechanisms to support VO (The responsible partner for some tasks)  Deploying, testing and evaluating XtreemOS on China grid testbeds RedFlag  Packaging and distribution of XtreemOS  Integration with Red Flag Linux / AsiaUx  Provide user support of XtreemOS

About ICT Full Name: Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences ( ICT of CAS ) Founded in 1956, the First National Research Institute on Computer Science and Technology in China Pilot R&D Initiatives  High-Performance Computing: Dawning Cluster 4000A ( Rank 10th of Top500 ), BlueWhale 1000 Network Storage System  General Purpose CPU Chips: GodSon I, II  Grid Computing: VEGA Grid  Digital Technologies: Audio and Video Coding Standard (AVS)  Networking : IPv6 Testing, Wireless Sensor networks The Cradle of Chinese IT Industries  Research Institutes originate from ICT: Software Institute of CAS, Network Center of CAS, etc.  Enterprises incubated by ICT: Lenovo, Dawning, etc.

Grid ICT - Research Center for Grid and Service Computing ( VEGA Center ) Grid Middleware: VEGA Software Suite  WS-I and OGSA conformance  Provide a tailorable Implementation of WS-Security  The core part of CNGrid Software, deployed in 8 nodes spanning 6 cities in China, End-User Programming Tools  GSML: “Visual Studio” for Grid Applications, based on Eclipse RCP (for desktop app.) and AJAX framework (for web app.)  VINCA : service composition / workflow tool, BPEL compatible Applications  Context-Aware Service Management: FLAME2008, serving Beijing Olympic Games  Advanced Manufacturing: AmGrid, operating in BOE corp.  E-government : COGES, operating in GuaDong Province Basic Research  Abacus Virtual Machine Leaflets available!

Preparing an IST proposal  Exploring Cooperation Opportunities  The Lifecycle of a Successful Proposal  The Structure of a Proposal  Writing Key Sections of a Proposal  Important Tips  Where to Get Information

Exploring Cooperation Opportunities The first but not the least, let your research be known to the world  Publications on high-quality international conferences and journals ( Let reviewers know your work even if not get published )  Meet with people within the same research community Attending conferences such as SC, HPCC, etc. Be volunteers of international activities such as serving as a PC member or panel chair of conferences Join in collaboration forums or consortiums such as GGF Find matching partners  Generally speaking, for a promising proposal, the project leader (a research institute, a university, more often, a group) is highly active and well known in a specific research area.  Your expertise or research experiences could complement to other partners

The lifecycle of a successful proposal Consortium formalization  May immediately start after the call has been announced  May terminate after there are enough members responsible for each Work Package (WP) Preparation of the proposal  Each partner contribute to their interested WPs Integrated Draft version 1,2,3 … till the deadline Submission of the proposal ( generally no extension ! ) The First Stage of Evaluation (in 1-2 months after the submission)  Must pass the required thresholds in 6 aspects: (1)Relevance (2) Potential Impact (3) S&T Excellence (4) Quality of the consortium (5) Quality of the management (6) Mobilization of the resources The Second Stage of Evaluation ( Hearings)  Respond to a number of specific questions concerning the proposal Contract negotiations  Determined by results of the second stage of evaluation, in order of precedence - highest ranking proposals first  Two or more rounds, much paperwork Signature of Contract, Start of the Project

The Structure of a Proposal Full title / Acronym / Strategic objectives / Proposal Abstract B.1 Scientific and technological objectives of the project and state of the art B.2 Relevance to the objectives of the IST Priority B.3 Potential impact B.4 Outline implementation plan B.5 Description of the consortium B.6 Description of project management B.7 Project resources B.8 Detailed implementation plan – first 18 months B.9 Other issues B.10 Gender issues Generally, Chinese partners need to focus on items in blue color

Writing Key Sections of a Proposal (1) Specify which work packages (WPs) you would like to participated in  Is this WP matching your research interests ?  What contribution could you make to this WP ?  How many person-months (PMs) could you afford ? Provide Inputs & Comments to each WP in which you will be involved  Objectives  Challenges  Approach  Industry involvement  Relevance to the project  Relation to other WPs Give a coarse estimation of your budget  Two stages: First 18 months / Later 30 months  Normally the cost can be calculated by PMs

Writing Key Sections of a Proposal (2) For Chinese Partners, the following sections are mandatory B.5 “Detailed Description of Partners”  Introduction of your organization  Your skills (research achievements)  Key Personnel ( Resume, publications could be attached) B.5.3 “Other Countries”  Why you are included in the consortium ? Some possible answers: Explore new opportunities for international collaboration, jointly addressing important technological issues and enhancing competitiveness Could contribute to the improvement of China’s IT infrastructure, could have some profound impact on technology transfer in China  How important is your contribution to the project ? What exactly role do you play in the project ?  Design / Implementation / Evaluation / Dissemination / … Your expertise complement to the consortium

Important Tips (1) Be active, better than be passive  Make your contributions as much as possible, add inputs to important sections of the proposal ( such as “Relevance to the objectives of the IST Priority”, “Potential impact “, and etc. ) if you can Be careful in writing  Not to boast  Ensure technical correctness  Make typo error and grammar error checking Generally, A Mailing List + A Website is an efficient approach for collaboration.  Timely response is welcome  Active discussion is welcome “Double-win” strategics  Invite other possible Chinese partners that could improve the quality of consortium, rather than becoming competitors

Important Tips (2) Financial Issues  Cost Model AC (Additional Cost): for academic partners, 100% get granted FC (Full Cost): for industrial partners, 50% get granted  Don’t over-estimate your budget ! It will impairs the evaluation of the proposal. Be reasonable. Detail Justification of the budget

Where to get the information IST Call 6 Site (contains all information you need) lPage&call_id=271 lPage&call_id=271 China-EU S&T Site (in Chinese) Regarding “IST Call 6: International cooperation on Grid Technologies” Target country: China  Research focus : Grid foundations: architecture, design and development of technologies and systems for the Grid Grid-enabled applications and services for business and society: promote global adoption of Grid environments and tools Proposals shall leverage and integrate existing initiatives in the focal areas in Europe and the target countries.

Conclusion Participating in an IST application is a good practice to learn how big projects are coordinated A good opportunity to make China R&D initiatives open to the world, to foster technological innovation through relationships with international players.

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