PASCAL2 Harvest Programme

1
PASCAL2 Harvest Programme

• Nicola Cancedda - January 2008

2
The Harvest Programme in short

• Funding for short (3 months) projects
• Mixed teams academia/industry (6 persons, at
  least 30 participants industry, at least 30
  academia) physically co-located during project
  execution (focus!)
• Open to proposals from both industry and academia
• Research, with some software deliverable
  (proof-of-concept prototypes)
• Training component
• Template agreements for managing IP issues
• Industry pool expression of interest from 13
  companies/organizations

3
Motivations

• PASCAL was scientifically very successful, but
  could have been more effective in interacting
  with outside the research community
• Many research results could have commercial
  applications, but do not receive the correct
  exposure
• Open Innovation is popular in companies and
  creates a more conductive environment for
  collaboration with academia

4
Creating the right conditions

• Ensuring project subjects
• are research subjects at least 30 of the team
  from academia/public research (at least one at
  the postdoc level or above) who will only be
  happy if they can publish results
• have real application interest at least 30 of
  the team from industry/users who will only be
  happy if they can turn the result into something
  useful/profitable
• Establishing clear objectives including software
  deliverables
• Ensuring motivation of all partners
• Only travel and subsistence expenses refunded by
  PASCAL, not salaries ? no incentive to
  participate just to get the money and do
  nothing
• (Short-term) relocation of at least some
  participants ? Requires significant personal
  investment
• Facilitating effective exchanges
• Hands-on experience acquired working side-by-side
  with the best academic/industrial experts
• Specific training activities

5
Harvest Project Lifecycle
M-4
M
M3
M?
M5
M-9
M-8
M-5
M-4.5
On-site project execution
Proposal published
Proposal submitted
Proposals ranked by HP committee
Proposals selected by SC
Project reviewed
Harvest workshop
Project team prepares demonstration
Proposal writing
Negotiations and team building
Proposal reviewed
Project preparatory work
6
Project budget estimates

• Notes
• Estimates assume one (min) or two (max)
  participants are already on-site
• Per-diems could be adjusted based on the
  Marie-Curie national rates

7
Expected content of proposals

• Problem description
• General requirements for the software which
  constitutes the expected output
• If applicable, a description of the method that
  will be used to asses performance, together with
  relevant datasets
• Expected duration
• Milestones
• Team composition
• Requested funding
• Content of the training that will be delivered
  to participants
• IP agreement

8
Management of Intellectual Property (1/2)

• Three typical scenarios
• Open Source-style project for other academic
  disciplines
• User side of the Harvest team is some public
  research institution in a subject field out of
  the scope of PASCAL
• Joint research and development of component or
  application
• a combination of private and public PASCAL
  partners contribute complementary skills to the
  development of a component or an application,
• the whole cost of travel and subsistence for the
  members of the team is covered by the Harvest
  programme.
• Industry-sponsored research and development
• one or more private parties fund the project at a
  significant level

9
Management of Intellectual Property (2/2)

• Summary of possible terms for access rights, to
  be developed in IP agreement templates

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What is in it for
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Current Industrial Club (expressions of interest)

• British Telecom
• France Telecom - RD
• Accenture Technology Labs
• Yahoo! Research
• IBM
• iSOCO
• Sirma/Ontotext
• Cycorp Europe

• Topodia
• Omniture
• Siemens
• Xerox
• EC Joint Research Centre
• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

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Plans

• Establish procedures (open call?)
• Write IP agreement templates (Underway)
• Prepare web infrastructure for proposal
  publication
• Prepare call for proposals
• Define preference criteria (Underway)
• Identify reviewers
• Extend industrial club
• Write sample project proposal (Done)
• Communicate, communicate, communicate
  (Underway!)
• Run a pilot
• Issue CfP

13
Sources of Inspiration

• Johns Hopkins University CLSP workshops
  (http//www.clsp.jhu.edu/workshops/)
• The NineSigma innovation broker
  (http//www.ninesigma.net/)
• Intel Research Network of labs
  (http//www.intel-research.net/)
• Available information on the the European
  Institute of Technology (http//ec.europa.eu/educa
  tion/policies/educ/eit/index_en.html)
• The Newton Institute (http//www.newton.cam.ac.uk
  /)
• WebValley (http//webvalley.itc.it/)
• The Netflix Prize (http//www.netflixprize.com/ru
  les)
• Henry Chesbroughs Open Innovation, Harvard
  Business School Press, 2006.

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Contact

• Expressions of interest welcome
• Address comments and questions to
• Nicola.Cancedda_at_xerox.com
• Marko.Grobelnik_at_ijs.si