Advanced Computing for Innovation

AComIn: Objectives

The general objective is to strengthen the IICT research and innovation capacity by increasing the knowledge and skills of IICT researchers in emerging areas as well as by purchasing modern research infrastructure. AComIn should help the institute to successfully accomplish its strategic mission: by 2016, i.e. 5 years after its creation, IICT has to become a leading RTD Centre in Eastern Europe, providing facilities and working conditions comparable to the average standards of the EU Centres of Excellence in ICT. The institute will support the sustainable regional and national growth and employment by providing RTD results to advanced industrial organisations; it will be a focal point of high-quality research training in South-East Europe.
More specifically, the project objectives are as follows:

Strengthening the IICT Human Potential by recruitment of incoming experienced researchers, foreigners and Bulgarian nationals who have left the country, including long-term employments of 7 post-docs;
Purchase of modern equipment for setting up a Smart Periphery Lab that enables to fully exploit the potential of the existing IICT core Grid infrastructure and (when needed) to facilitate the access to the Bulgarian Supercomputer IBM Blue Gene/P;
Organisation and Training of User Communities with company representatives who need deeper expertise and innovative RTD approach in their areas of activities;
Networking with the partnering organisations and knowledge exchange with established ICT experts as well as participation of IICT researchers in prestigious international scientific events and exhibitions;
Building an IICT Innovation Strategy and development of innovation potential and IPR management skills Patent applications to the European Patent Office and the Bulgarian patent office are foreseen as well;
Organisation of various dissemination activities to spread out the project results and the IICT excellence:

an International conference “Advanced Computing for Innovation” in year 3;
AComIn-related dissemination activities at 15 international scientific events, to be organised by IICT in Bulgaria in advanced computing, language and semantic technologies, image and signal processing as well as optimisation and intelligent control. Six of these events belong to established series of international conferences and workshops;
a non-scientific Stakeholder Meeting and a Round Table;
two Information Days (Awareness Days) in year 1 and year 2;
three Doors Open Days combined with ′Stock exchange of technology transfer′ oriented to User Communities and innovation-absorbing Bulgarian companies;
a cycle of know-how transfer seminars to User Communities;
publishing books and monographs, user manuals, and promotional project materials;
making movies for dissemination via TV channels, YouTube, Facebook etc.;
a tour in the country in year 3, to demonstrate the project results.

Evaluation of IICT by international EC-selected reviewers, scheduled for months 35-42.

AComIn: Work Packages

All AComIn activities are organized in 7 Work packages (WPs):

WP1: Strengthening the IICT_BAS Human Potential.

It is planned to employ incoming experienced researchers who during the last 3 years have actively worked at least 2 years out of Bulgaria. 7 three-year positions for post-docs (3 – for Bulgarians and 4 – for foreigners) are available. AComIn is also going to employ via short term contracts incoming experiences researchers for 34 person months to participate in various project activities

WP2: Purchasing Smart Lab and building User Communities. The main objectives of WP2 are:

To organize the purchase of the Smart Lab devices
To fully integrate Smart Lab in the IICT-BAS computational environment ensuring its future use by publishing User Manuals and Guides of Exploitation
To organize User Communities of industrial experts (company representatives) who aim at applying the AComIn results in industrial settings

WP3: Networking with leading EU partners. The main objectives of WP3 are:

To organize two-way secondments and short visits between IICT-BAS and its partnering teams
To enable the participation of IICT-BAS scientists at prestigious international conferences, international fairs/exhibitions, Information, Partner-search and training events etc. organized in the EU

WP4: Development of IP and KT Plan and Innovation Capacity Building. The main objectives of WP4 are:

To set up IP policies and KT processes at IICT-BAS and to harmonize them with the European standards for transferring research results to industry
To create sufficient awareness with the IICT-BAS staff of the value of protecting their IP and of measures for early identification of IP Potential
To submit patent applications to BPO and EPO

WP5: Dissemination. The main objectives of WP5 are:

To organise various activities fro broad dissemination of AComIn results at regional, national and international levels.
To organize regular cycles of Technology Transfer seminars for User Communities promoting the potential of the advanced ICT applications and the Smart Lab devices.

WP6: Assessment of IICT-BAS by independent international reviewers. The main objectives of WP6 are:

To assign a ‘quality label’ to the research performance, human potential, infrastructure, administrative and management capacity of IICT-BAS
To promote IICT-BAS as an excellent regional unit with capacity to perform high-quality RTD activities in large EU research projects, infrastructures and clusters with ICT components

WP7: Management.

WP7 provides permanent monitoring on all AComIn activities and the project progress as a whole. It also organises on yearly basis an internal project assessment that includes opinions, remarks and recommendations prepared by the project partners. WP7 is responsible for developing a ‘Strategy for Stable Development of IICT-BAS’ (month 24)