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Introduction of relevant, upcoming European project calls and collecting expressions of interests

Gergely Sipos

EGI Foundation

2024.07.01

EGI Community Managers’ meeting

Dissemination level: EGI Members

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Advancing Large AI Models: Integration of New Data Modalities and Expansion of Capabilities (AI, Data and Robotics Partnership) (HORIZON-CL4-2024-HUMAN-03-01)

  • Large artificial intelligence (AI) models refer to a new generation of general-purpose AI models (i.e., generative AI) capable of adapting to diverse domains and tasks without significant modification. Notable examples, such as OpenAI's GPT-4V and META’s Llama 2 or DinoV2, have demonstrated a wide and growing variety of capabilities.
  • 2 x 25 Million EUR projects to be accepted to
    • Enhance the applicability of large AI systems to new domains through the integration of innovative data modalities, such as sensor measurements (e.g. in robotics, IoT) or remote sensing (e.g. earth observation), as input. OR
    • Improvement of current multimodal large AI systems capabilities and expansion of the number of data modalities jointly handed by one AI system, leading to broader application potential and improved AI performance.
  • Proposals should address at least one of the following focus areas:
    • the integration of innovative modalities of data for large AI models during training and inference. Examples of innovative modalities include event streams, structured data and sensor measurements. The incorporation of such new modalities could potentially bring unforeseen enhancements to model performance and enable their application in new domains like weather forecasting, robotics, and manufacturing.
    • enhanced multimodal models that exceed the current state of the art, with either significantly improved capabilities or the ability to handle a larger number of modalities. This focus area also encompasses models capable of multi-modal output generation. Current large-scale multimodal models most commonly engage with only vision and language.
  • A minor portion (up to 10%) of the budget may be allocated for the acquisition of computing resources for codebase development and small-scale experiments, though the primary source of computing resources for pretraining should be sought from external high-performance computing facilities such as EuroHPC or National centres. The proposal should describe convincingly the strategy to access these computing resources.
  • Deadline date: 18 September 2024

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Approaches and tools for security in software and hardware development and assessment (HORIZON-CL3-2024-CS-01-01)

  • Proposals should contribute to the achievement of one or more of the following impacts:
    • Strengthened EU cybersecurity capacities and European Union sovereignty in digital technologies
    • More resilient digital infrastructures, systems and processes
    • Increased software, hardware and supply chain security
    • Secured disruptive technologies
    • Smart and quantifiable security assurance and certification shared across the EU
    • Reinforced awareness and a common cyber security management and culture.
  • All proposals of projects under this Destination should aim to be complementary and avoid overlaps with relevant actions funded by other EU instruments, including the
    • European Defence Fund and its precursors (the European Defence Industrial Development Programme (EDIDP) and the
    • Preparatory Action on Defence research (PADR)), based on the information publicly available
  • 6 x 4-6 Million EUR projects to be accepted

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HealthData@EU Procurements 1.

DI-p-24-73 Support to key stakeholders and HealthData@EU participants in scope of the proposed European Health Data Space

  • (1) In preparation to implement the EHDS in the area of secondary use of health data, there is a need to
    • support key stakeholders to comply with the EHDS requirements and technical specifications while supporting their collaboration in the rollout and operations of HealthData@EU.

Stakeholders include, among others,

    • the community of practice of health data access bodies, health data research infrastructures and other relevant data sharing infrastructures health data holders, relevant Union bodies, and relevant third parties, e.g., patient representatives, national statistical offices involved in HealthData@EU and in the EHDS
  • (2) It will also support the organisation, functioning and governance of HealthData@EU IT infrastructure.

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HealthData@EU Procurements 1. (cont’d)

DI-p-24-73 Support to key stakeholders and HealthData@EU participants in scope of the proposed European Health Data Space

  • Activities:
    • a) supporting the creation and operation of communities of practice bringing together the main stakeholders in secondary uses of health data, including those involved in the HealthData@EU IT infrastructure;
    • b) supporting cooperation and knowledge sharing between key stakeholders in secondary uses of health data, and provide digital tools for collaborative work;
    • c) support the implementation of the governance procedures of the HealthData@EU IT infrastructure;
    • d) providing the secretariat to communities and groups involved in secondary use of health data (e.g., by organising recurring meetings, workshops and helpdesk activities);
    • e) monitoring and evaluating progress made by stakeholders on secondary use of health data in scope of the EHDS (e.g., by collecting and reviewing reports from health data access bodies and HealthData@EU participants);
    • f) supporting compliance with requirements and the adoption of technical specifications for the secondary use of health data.
  • Budget: 1.5 Million EUR - Procurement (!)
  • Starting point for the technical infrastructure specification and requirements are expected to be from

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HealthData@EU Procurements 2.

DI-p-24-74.1 Operations and further development of HealthData@EU (central services)

  • This action will build on and take further the HealthData@EU pilot and the previous activities funded under the EU4Health Programme to develop the central services of HealthData@EU.
  • Specific activities in scope of this action include:
    • a) analysis, design, development and deployment of the central services provided by the Commission for HealthData@EU, including, for example, technical infrastructures, software, hosting, reference implementations (e.g., secure processing environments) and governance elements, and their adaptations and expansions;
    • b) operations of the common technical infrastructure for HealthData@EU.
  • Budget: 1.15 Million EUR - Procurement (!)

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Most recent HealthData@EU Pilot deliverables:

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Questionnaire for the build-up phase of the EOSC Federation

Today:

  • Introduction to the EOSC Questionnaire - Dale Robertson
  • EGI Contribution to the EOSC Federation - Gergely Sipos
  • Discussion of an EGI Node response

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Deadline for Questionnaire: 18/Aug

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Additional consultations:

16/July and 18/July: Council

15/July: EGI-based Thematic Service providers

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Slide: from EOSC Association

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Slide: from EOSC Association

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Slide: from EOSC Association

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Slide: from EOSC Association

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Minimal requirements for ‘candidate EOSC Nodes’

  • The legal entity representing the candidate EOSC Node must have the authority to establish agreements. → EGI Foundation
  • The legal entity responsible for the candidate EOSC Node should commit to providing sufficient resources to ensure its operation for at least 24 months, ideally for 5 years or more. → Fulfilled
  • The candidate EOSC Node must have sufficient capacity and expertise to be able to ensure that the data and services it includes can be operated at a sufficiently high Technology and Readiness Level ensuring robust, reliable and secure performance. → TRL7+ services
  • Data and Services must be at least findable and accessible to registered EOSC users and fulfil the FAIR principles in general, while services such as compute and storage capacity should be available in sufficient quantities to multiple user groups. → EGI Service catalogue complemented by Thematic Services/Data catalogue

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EGI Contribution to the EOSC Federation

Position paper published on 7/May/2024: https://zenodo.org/records/11128540

  • EGI recognises EOSC as the European initiative to support the implementation of the Global Open Research Commons across Europe (RDA GORC), and the EGI Federation has provided many of the essential elements identified by GORC
  • EGI Federation aspires to be part of the EOSC Federation as a Node contributing EOSC-dedicated capacity, available for transnational access to
      • Users and services operated within the EGI Node
      • Services operated within the other EOSC Nodes � (EU Node; Future other nodes incl. Those emerging in EOSC-Beyond)
  • Recommendations for EOSC:
  • EOSC should be focused on grand challenges that require the integration of research data, computing, storage, services and tools, knowledge and user support from multiple disciplines
  • Increase adoption of AI/ML solutions
  • EGI aspires to be part of the EOSC Federation as a Node AND in the EOSC Core
  • EU Commission funding should catalyse Member State funding
  • Research Infrastructures and e-Infrastructures need EU support for Transnational Access to overcome limitations of national funds and short-lived projects

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Draft response and discussions

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y0fb4xQSWrEU0GStlyxaQMFvd4P5DvYcgKMkuzuWdcw/edit?usp=sharing

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Thank you

Person name

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+31 (0)20 89 32 007

contact@egi.eu

This work is partially funded by the EU research and innovation programme

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