Through an agile and flexible process, following the Horizon Europe cascade funding mechanism, ongoing NGI Research and Innovation Actions (RIAs) provide support to projects from outstanding academic researchers, hi-tech startups and SMEs.
Funding is allocated to projects using short research cycles targeting the most promising ideas. Each of the selected projects pursue their own objectives, while the NGI RIAs provide the programme logic and vision, technical support, coaching and mentoring, to ensure that projects contribute towards a significant advancement of research and innovation in the NGI initiative.
The focus is on advanced concepts and technologies that link to relevant use cases and that can have an impact on the market and society over all. Applications and services that innovate without a research component are not covered by this model.
NGI Zero Commons Fund
NGI Zero Commons Fund 1st Open Call
Reclaim the public nature of the internet.
Opening date: 1st December 2023
Closing date: 1st February 2024, 12:00pm CET (Brussels Time)
Short description:
The goal of this new fund is to help deliver, mature and scale new internet commons across the whole technology spectrum, from libre silicon to middleware, from P2P infrastructure to convenient end user applications. We have a holistic, full-stack approach, simply because there is no other way. If we want to reclaim the public nature of the internet and yield the full benefits from technology as a society, we need to have full coverage — period.
Only though enough critical mass of shared building blocks and collective resources will our governments, businesses and civil society be able to secure their security and long term operational availability.
Target participants:
Independent researchers and developers to create powerful new technologies, and to help them put it in the hands of future generations as building blocks for a fair and democratic society and a sustainable and open economy that benefits all.
Visit:
nlnet.nl/commonsfund
Contact for more info:
nlnet.nl/commonsfund
NGI Zero CORE
NGI Zero Core 5th Open Call
Moving the internet forward.
Opening date: 1st December 2023
Closing date: 1st February 2024, 12:00pm CET (Brussels Time)
Short description:
We are looking for troubleshooters that help society tackle the ossification of the internet and other hard but very very important challenges, each of which has significant social and economic consequences. We ,need new ideas and disruptive core technologies, while at the same time evolving and growing existing technologies that are still enough future-proof. The project results become available under an open source license, so anyone can read and validate ,the source code, and anyone can use the code to create
technology that fits their own purposes. The right to reuse and right to repair not only allow for unrestricted scrutiny and permissionless innovation, but also help to reduce e-waste. And the use of standards
enables interoperability and redundancy in implementation to reduce the risk of compromise and failure.
We are seeking project proposals between 5.000 and 50.000 euro’s — with the possibility to scale them up if there is proven potential.
Reliability, confidentiality, integrity, security, and resource efficiency should be the ‘new normal’ of the internet, something ordinary users should not have to worry about — users should be in control. So let’s make it happen.
Target participants:
We assist independent researchers and developers to create powerful new technologies, and to help them put it in the hands of future generations as building blocks for a fair and democratic society and a sustainable and open economy that benefits all. Have a look at other NGI Zeroprogrammes to see the kind of efforts we mean, but don’t be afraid to send something completely different if you think you can contribute to the topic — it really is an open call.
Visit:
nlnet.nl/core
Contact for more info:
nlnet.nl/core
NGI SARGASSO
NGI Sargasso 2nd Open Call
Promoting the transatlantic cooperation for NGI technologies.
Opening date: 18th October 2023
Closing date: 18th December 2023, 17:00 CET / 10:00 CDT
Short description:
NGI Sargasso is a project that aims to strengthen EU cooperation and partnerships with the US and Canada in the Next Generation Internet. The 36-month long initiative focuses on improving the internet’s human-centric approach through the promotion of openness, inclusion, transparency, privacy, cooperation, and data protection.
NGI Sargasso’s objective is to revolutionize the Next Generation Internet technologies and standards while ensuring interoperability and promoting innovation and creativity. The project is based on a transatlantic collaborative ecosystem to enhance online privacy and security and establish global standards for NGI accessible to everyone. NGI Sargasso’s mission is to contribute to a sustainable open internet environment through experimentation of new ideas, prototype implementation, and contribution to standards and open-source communities.
Target participants: NGI Sargasso Open Call is open to universities, research centres, SMEs, startups, NGOs, and foundations. Teams must have at least one member from the EU and another from the USA or Canada to be eligible for the proposal submission.
Proposals submitted to the NGI Sargasso Open Call must relate to at least one of the following knowledge areas: Trust, Data Sovereignty, Digital Identity, Internet Architecture and Renovation, Decentralized Technology, Interoperability and Standardization, New Internet Commons.
Visit:
ngisargasso.eu
Contact for more info:
[email protected]
NGI Zero Review
NGI Zero Review Open Call
Supporting quality and maturity of digital commons.
Opening date: 1st August 2022
Closing date: 31st July 2025
Short description:
NGI Zero Review is a three year support programme offering various targeted services to free and open source projects within the Next Generation Internet initiative.
Goal is to improve the quality and inclusiveness of these projects, and make them more sustainable where possible by supporting the most promising ideas to live up to high standards (sometimes called “walk the talk”) in terms of security, privacy, accessibility, open source licensing compliance, standardisation, etc.
Target participants: The NGI Zero Review program is open to grantees withing the NGI initiative. Available to free and open source projects if the project has received a grant from the Next Generation Internet initiative, and contributes to the vision of the Next Generation Internet.
Visit:
nlnet.nl/NGI0/review/
Contact for more info:
nlnet.nl/NGI0/review/