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eCSE09 Timeline

A timetable of recent, current and upcoming calls can be found here.

The 9th ARCHER2 eCSE call

The 9th ARCHER2 eCSE call (ARCHER2 eCSE09) opened on the 6 December 2022. The deadline for submitting documents for technical evaluations is 16:00 on 21 February 2023, with the final deadline for proposal submission being 16:00 on 14 March 2023.

Through a series of regular calls, Embedded CSE (eCSE) support provides funding to the ARCHER2 user community to develop software in a sustainable manner, to run on the ARCHER2 system.

Funding will enable the employment of an RSE (a Research Software Engineer, PDRA or equivalent) to work specifically on the relevant software to enable new features or improve the performance of the code.

We are very pleased to announce that for this call eCSE projects can be requested for up to 18 person months of effort per project. We hope that this increase in effort will provide researchers the opportunity to carry out more in depth improvements to software and to allow for an increase in the scope of a project’s objectives. There is flexibility in the way the effort is requested. For example, a project may have more than one person working on it or the effort could be spread over a greater number of calendar months, i.e. a staff member could work on the project at less than 100% alongside other commitments or it could be worked on by a staff member who doesn’t work full time. Please just get in contact with the ARCHER2 Service Desk if you wish to discuss possible scenarios.

Application process and guidance for the eCSE call

Applying for an eCSE project under ARCHER2 is via a 2-stage submission process where technical evaluation documents must be submitted for evaluation by the first deadline above in advance of the final submission. Any project members (PI, Co-I and technical staff) must have been invited by the proposal owner to join a project and have accepted the invitation in time for the final submission. Proposals cannot be submitted without technical staff. All technical staff must provide a CV, and the PI and all Co-Is must each provide descriptions of their relevant background experience and the contribution that they will each bring to the project. Please see the guidance document for further information about this.

We are very keen to encourage software developers at the early stage of their careers. At this stage, an RSE will be developing expertise. This will be taken into account when a proposal is assessed and in such cases the Panel will be looking at what support is on offer from PI and any Co-Is so it is important that this information is made clear in the proposal. Please see the guidance document for further information about this.

Please follow the links here for the guidance for submitting a proposal to this call, along with the technical evaluation form and the project proposal template. Each call has its own guidance document and associated forms. Please ensure that the correct guidance and forms are used for this call.

If your eCSE proposal is selected for funding, you will be provided with an award letter and will be asked to agree to the eCSE Terms. in advance of submitting your eCSE proposal. Please get in touch via the ARCHER2 service desk if you have any questions about this.

Scope of eCSE call

Examples of eCSE work could be

Funding will be prioritised for projects which can evidence how they complement, support and enable research in the existing EPSRC portfolio and the strategic aims of the councils.

Note that projects to develop software on the GPU hardware component of ARCHER2 are not within the remit of this call.

Funding and eligibility

Funding is provided for software which results in research which is within the remit of EPSRC. Funding can be requested for staff located at the institution of the PI, third parties, or can include staff from the centralised CSE support team or a mixture of the above. Funding can be requested for between 1 and 18 person months in total. Staff employed on an eCSE project are expected to play a full part in ARCHER2 related activities.

Reasonable travel will be funded for travel within the UK to meetings with other project partners.

When submitting your proposal, all costs must be included in your submission. Please ensure your budget is accurate and inclusive of all costs before submission and that you provide a costing breakdown. Please see the guidance document for details of allowable costs and associated documents.

Computing Resources

Successful projects will be given an allocation of 800 CU of ARCHER2 resources per 6 months of eCSE person month awarded.

Training

Regular training will be provided via the CSE team. Details of upcoming training courses can be found on the Training page.

Application and Review Process

Information and guidelines on how to apply for eCSE funding can be found in our Application Guidance document. Proposals undergo a two-stage process. A technical evaluation is performed first with completed forms being passed back to applicants in time for including in the final submission. After final submission, all proposal documents, including the completed technical evaluation forms, will then be passed to the review panel who will make decisions on ranking and any award of funding.

The eCSE technical evaluation form should be submitted to the ARCHER service desk support@archer2.ac.uk. The proposal template should be submitted via the ARCHER2 SAFE together with the completed Technical Evaluation document.

The eCSE team recently presented a webinar giving an overview of the eCSE scheme and application process, including a walk-through of completing the application form.

Reports and eCSE staff requirements

A detailed technical report is required at the end of the project. A template is provided for the report will be made available on the ARCHER2 website. Upon conclusion of the project, in addition to the detailed technical section, a section aimed at the non-specialist is required explaining the aims and successes of the project together with the scientific and any other impacts of the work. PIs and/or project technical staff are expected to give a least one webinar of the work achieved.

Intellectual Property

IPR will belong to the project, although the expectation is that any EPSRC-funded code development will be made available to the wider community via a new release of the software.

Acknowledging ARCHER2

You should use the following phrase to acknowledge ARCHER2 in all research outputs that have used the facility and the eCSE Programme:

This work was funded under the embedded CSE programme of the ARCHER2 UK National Supercomputing Service (http://www.archer2.ac.uk).

You should also tag outputs with the keyword ARCHER2 whenever possible.

Contact

The ARCHER2 CSE team can be contacted via the ARCHER2 service desk support@archer2.ac.uk.