OCRE and CERN openlab Announce Winning COVID19 Applicants

OCRE and CERN openlab have announced the winning applicants for the COVID19 related voucher call. The call to distribute €10,000 worth of IaaS vouchers was launched on the 21st of April and was open to early-career researchers working in any research sector related to COVID19.

Winning applicants in receipt of OCRE and CERN openlab vouchers include a project studying the effects of COVID19 on social wellbeing, a project investigating the usage of 3D printers for facemasks and other protective equipment, and another project researching the changes in attitude to environmental sustainability due to COVID19.

All in all nine applications from across Europe were awarded funding vouchers from CloudSigma and Exoscale.  And delivered through the European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers (Eurodoc). 

Viktor Grigorov, the OCRE project coordinator in CloudSigma said that ''CloudSigma is proud to be the first cloud partner to have deployed the program, successfully onboarding 15 research organisations to date” and that they “look forward to future phases of the OCRE program enabling educational and research institutions to fully partake in the benefits from cloud services.'' 

Antoine Coetsier, Chief Operating Officer, stated that “it is great to see the OCRE Project coming to reality and getting ready to support Research and Education in a true Pan-European setup. We are especially proud with Exoscale to have been able to pave the way for that initiative via the award winning HNSciCloud Project which has pioneered many innovations used in the OCRE Tender, such as vouchers for individual researchers. We are looking forward to meet the criteria and be part of the rich catalog." 

The successful applicants, including the projects they have received the IaaS voucher for, are as follows:

• Judith Molnar: Changes to economical and environmental sustainability due to COVID19
• Adam Wronkowski: The effects caused by breaking our routine due to COVID19
• Claude Bajada: How COVID19 measures are effecting our social wellbeing
• Petra Fic: Using cloud services to forecast the possible first day without newly infected cases
• Ronnie Das: Measuring the impact of of people movement and social distancing on reported cases
• Laura Grech: Sequencing coronavirus genome and linking the different strains to different systems
• Pavlo Sidelov: Doctor diagnostic tool, using XRAY or computer tomography scans  
• Julianna Cortes: Comparing different 3D printers and materials for fabricating digitally customised mask designs using facial scanning.
• Giovanny Rodriguez Blanco: Analysing plasma samples from COVID19 patients

The calls are part of a flexible funding scheme in the form of vouchers for individual researchers and adoption funding for individual institutions & buyer groups, supported by the OCRE project and the CERN openlab public-private partnership.

The vouchers are being financed by the EU and CERN to support the development of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) by providing mechanisms to involve private sector service providers in the EOSC and to encourage the uptake of commercial cloud service across the European research landscape.

We wish these researchers well in their work knowing that - armed with better tools, they will be well prepared to take on Europe’s societal and medical challenges.

More information

OCRE has put in place several agreements with various organisations and projects that are authorised to evaluate applications for these vouchers for their community members. As a direct path to the long-tail of science - the grassroots researchers, OCRE has entered into an agreement with Eurodoc and the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA) to distribute cloud vouchers to their members. It is in this context that OCRE through Eurodoc will distribute the COVID19 research fund.

As part of its mission to connect commercial cloud services with the research community, OCRE is running several tendering processes. The tenders will result in a framework that will ensure easy access to commercial cloud and digital Earth observation services for researchers. Follow us for more information

CERN openlab is a unique public-private partnership that works to accelerate the development of cutting-edge ICT solutions for the worldwide LHC community and wider scientific research. Through CERN openlab, CERN collaborates with leading ICT companies and research institutes.

Website: http://www.cern.ch/openlab ; Twitter: @CERNopenlab