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 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/
TRUSTCHAIN
2nd Open Call
Opening date: 20th July 2023
Closing date: 20th September 2023
Short description:
This Open Call 2 welcomes applications that will clearly define, upgrade/extend the state-of-the-art, and develop the following types of solutions:
- Enhanced Consent profiles to implement transparent and user-friendly consent mechanisms that clearly explain how user data will be collected, used, and shared. A mechanism to provide users the ability to form informed consent and easily manage their privacy preferences in data-sharing models.
- Data Minimization and Purpose Limitation techniques built in the web framework so that only necessary data is collected for legitimate purposes. Data owners should have means to share only data necessary to access a particular service.
- Secure data exchange and privacy-aware data processing must be the cornerstone of the new data economy. Privacy of training data, machine-learning models and model parameters should be aimed for.
- Developing new privacy-preserving data flow techniques in line with international data sharing agreements (e.g., EU Data Spaces) so that the user has choice to tune data parameters for trading/sharing of data.
- Develop new mechanisms in line with the international data flows standards so that the data can move freely within the EU and across international borders including USA, Japan and China.
- Data identification, data provenance, data tracking mechanisms should be built so that the data that is exchanged can be tracked. Handling of the data according to the user consent provided in a data exchange should be verifiable.
- Data certification/verification methods should be developed to verify the trustworthiness of the data.
- Modern privacy-enhancing technologies, such as local differential privacy and other interactive privacy techniques, taking also into account online publicly available datasets that can be linked to the original data.
- Data obfuscation, perturbation and anonymization techniques or their combination that properly address the trade-off between privacy-preservation and data utility.
The above system examples are only indicative, and applicants can propose solutions that integrate one or more of them. Applicants can also submit a proposal under a different example scenario, as long as it serves the overall TrustChain vision and objectives, while also fitting within the scope of human-centric decentralised trustworthy Next Generation Internet protocols.
Proposed solutions should utilize existing concepts and technologies already developed for data value sharing and preserving user-privacy and fit within TrustChain’s vision and objectives. The solutions should:
- be provided as open-source software,
- tested and evaluated by an adequate pool of potential end-users that should be identified and mentioned in the application
supported by a self-sustaining business model for exploiting the developed system at the end of the project.
Target participants:
The target applicants of this call are developers, innovators, researchers, SMEs, and entrepreneurs working on different NGI relevant topics and application domains at the intersection between the technical field (e.g., Software Engineering, Network Security, Semantic Web, Cryptography, Blockchain, Digital Twin, Blockchain Security, Digital Identity, Blockchain Protocol), the Social sciences and Humanities (e.g., Social Innovation, not-for-profit sector, Social Entrepreneurship, public goods) as well as any others including economics, environment, art, design, which can contribute to the NGI TrustChain relevant vision.
Visit:
trustchain.ngi.eu
Contact for more info:
[email protected]
NGI ENRICHERS
2nd Round of Calls
Opening date: 1st July 2023
Closing date: 30th September 2023
Short description:
NGI Enrichers aims to:
- Reinforce EU-US-Canada cooperation in the area of Next Generation Internet, and to establish a continuous dialogue among US, Canada and European innovators.
- Increased inclusiveness, by supporting a human-centered approach to technology development that is aligned with European social and ethical values, as well as sustainability.
- Sustainable, high-quality jobs by targeting skills mismatches, the need to empower workers, and ethical considerations relating to technological progress
Successful applicants will spend 3-6 months to work and collaborate with US and Canadian hosts organisations, enhancing knowledge-sharing and establishing long-term collaborations on NGI technologies, services, and standards. The programme will provide living allowance and travel funding:
- Monthly lump sum living allowance: EUR 3.800 – for every full month of stay.
- Travel and visa costs (including insurance required for the visa and travel for training to attend the bootcamp) up to 3000 euros upon cost justification.
- Insurance costs: will be reimbursed also for fellows not needing a Visa.
Target participants:
The NGI Transatlantic Fellowship program is seeking to engage NGI Researchers and Innovators, including researchers with technical background, or Social Sciences and the Humanities (SSH) background, or from other multidisciplinary fields e.g. working at the intersection of social and natural sciences.
The program provides travel funding, living allowance (EUR 3.800 – for every full month of stay), and visa cost for visiting fellows from Europe, and supports both fellows and their hosts, with bootcamps, mentors, visibility, community building and more! Applicants can find general information on the fellowship programme on the European applicants – NGI Enrichers page
Visit:
https://enrichers.ngi.eu/open-calls/
https://enrichers.ngi.eu/european-applicants/
Contact for more info:
[email protected]
NGI Zero Entrust
6th Open Call
Opening date: 1st August 2023
Closing date: 1st October 2023, 12:00 pm CEST (Brussels time)
Short description:
We need a more resilient, trustworthy and open internet, empowering the end-users. Trust is only justified and sustainable if it the technology in question is up for the job, and is secure-by-design as well as trustworthy. Much of the software, services and devices does not measure up, and it is quite unlikely this will just improve by itself.
NGI0 Entrust is designed to move beyond the status quo and create a virtuous cycle of innovation through free and open source software, libre hardware and open standards. If we want everyone to use and benefit from the internet to its full potential without holding back, the internet must be built on strong and transparent technologies that allow for permissionless innovation and are equally accessible to all.
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/entrust/
Contact for more info:
nlnet.nl/entrust/
NGI Zero CORE
3rd Open Call
Opening date: 1st August 2023
Closing date: 1st October 2023, 12:00 pm CEST (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 SEARCH
3rd Open Call
Opening date: 1st august 2023
Closing date: 2nd October 2023
Short description:
Let’s build a trusted Internet for the digital age, through open source Search projects:
- Addressing gaps in Large Language Models
- AI detection tools in cultural products
- Search and discovery technologies for the arts
- Privacy in Search and Discovery: Federated Learning
- Transfer learning for search and discovery
- The next generation of intelligent voice-based assistants
- Enabling new ways of discovering and accessing information
Target participants:
Academic researchers, hi-tech startups and SMEs can benefit up to 150,000 € per selected NGI Search project, along with technology,
business and innovation services.
Visit:
https://ngi-search-3rd-open-call.fundingbox.com
Contact for more info:
[email protected]