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Harvest Programme

PASCAL2 invites submissions of proposals for Harvest Projects

Important dates

Expression of intention to submit: October 15, 2010
Deadline proposal submissions: October 29, 2010
Notification of acceptance: November 26, 2010

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:.

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

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

http://pascallin2.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Programmes/HA/harvest_webpage.html#IP

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, timeline.
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?

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 October 15. Actual submissions should be done through the PASCAL2 Harvest Programme page by October 29:.

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 organisers know: PASCAL2 is a large network, and maybe someone can find a place for you. Proposing, organising, 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.