Background

The Grenoble-Swansea Centre for AI (GoSCAI) was launched April 2022 (See below). To help build its capacity and impact, the Centre is inviting proposals for projects that address the theme of AI for the benefit of human, society, environment. The Centre will fund up to 3 sprint projects providing a Post-Doctoral Researcher to each for between 12 and 14 months (between Oct 2023 and Dec 2024). In addition, the Centre will fund travel and subsistence funding to allow for project staff mobility between the two institutions.

Key Dates

• March 3rd 2023: Call Launched
• April 12th 2023: Call Closes
• May 2023: Projects Announced
• October 2023: Projects must begin latest November 1st 2023

What we are looking for

Projects will need to clearly demonstrate how research will benefit human, society, and/or the environment. This can be evidenced by work that explores the interactive use of AI, the use of AI for human comfort (taken here in a broad sense) or how humans perceive or react to AI tools; co-creation of the research programme and outputs by stakeholders; and, work that can platform or lead to social, economic and/or environmental benefit.
Project teams must consist of members from research teams in both Grenoble and Swansea. Proposals should indicate where the post-doc will be primarily-based (Grenoble or Swansea). Proposers should also clearly indicate how the strengths of both institutions have been built upon. There should be at least one Early Career Researcher from both institutions in every team – for the purpose of this call, l, we consider ECRs as someone who is within eight years of the award of their PhD (full-time equivalent).
While the projects will of course lead to important research outputs, proposers should identify how the work might platform significant bids to external funders (e.g. Horizon Europe).

Making Connections

In shaping this call we held a workshop with colleagues in Grenoble and Swansea. If you were unable to attend these and wish to have some help to identify collaborations, please email us: hellomasi@swansea.ac.uk (for Swansea colleagues) and manel.boumegoura@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr (for Grenoble colleagues).

Assessment Criteria

Quality – the key criterion will consider aspects including: novelty, adventure, ambition, validity of the methodology.

Fit to Call – the degree a proposal addresses the benefit for human, society, and/or the environment, and the potential to lead to additions external funding.

Team – Appropriateness of team across the two institutions.

Planning and Management – resources requested; scheduling of activities. In terms of resources, this call will fund a Post Doctoral Researcher and travel/ subsistence to enable staff to meet during the project.

Proposal and Submission

Proposals should be no longer than 3 A4 pages in length and should address the criteria above. In addition, please include the 1 A4 page CVs of the members of the research team. Please submit all this information as one PDF.
Proposals should be emailed to both hellomasi@swansea.ac.uk and manel.boumegoura@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr.
The deadline is 12th April 2023.

Assessment Process

Each proposal will be reviewed by a panel of reviewers consisting of the Centre Joint-Directors; and, non-conflicted researchers in AI, visualisation, big-data from both institutions (and in particular from the scientific board of MIAI for Grenoble). Where necessary we will also seek external reviewers. Reviews will then be the basis of a panel assessment; the panel being made up of the reviewers.

Appendix

Grenoble-Swansea Centre for AI in Human Centred AI and Data Systems

Vision and Ambition

We will create a world-leading community that drives advances in data and intelligence based systems by taking a human-centric approach. All our activities will be based on a clear understanding of how they will benefit human, society, and environment. That is, we will use understandings of individual, community, organisational and societal needs to transcend the algorithms, interfaces, data structures, sensors and actuators that underpin future AI and data platforms, devices, and services.
The Centre will show that it is possible to do the highest quality research while being focussed on societal, economic and environmental needs. This is in contrast to many other Centres worldwide that either only focus on the ethical and social implications of new technologies (e.g. the Ada Lovelace Institute in the UK) or that take a “science-first” stance (e.g. Alan Turing Institute).

Objectives and aims

We have two interlinked objectives:

• To create and address a globally inspiring human-centric agenda for AI and data driven systems
• To act as the community that excels in and advocates for human centred science and innovation

By doing so we aim to:

• Be highly visible and attractive to stakeholders including private and public sector funders
• Widen the network of collaboration worldwide with relevant research and development centres, recruiting others to help further the agenda
• Attract future researchers and developers – undergraduate and postgraduate students – to join our movement for change