French-German call for projects on artificial intelligence

Within the framework of the collaboration between the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESRI) and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), a French-German joint call on artificial intelligence has been released.

The present call aims at supporting collaborative research on current challenges in AI and should address – without being limited to – one or more of the following topics:

• Distributed AI like, e.g., federated learning or edge computing

• Green AI that requires less resources, e.g., algorithms requiring less energy, less memory, less communication bandwidth

• Hybrid AI, e.g., combining machine learning and knowledge

• AI towards other sciences, e.g., AI & numerical simulations, AI & physics, AI & chemistry…

• Trustable AI, e.g., certifiable, explainable, or interpretable models and processing pipelines

• AI for leading edge technologies, e.g., dialog systems for media

Scope

Proposals should relate - without being limited - to one or more of the following application domains:

• Mobility & Transport

• Logistics & Services

• Energy (in particular renewable energy)

• Environment and Resource Protection

• Smart Industry & Production Technologies

• Smart Health

• Robotics

• Society

 Applications with focus on military use are excluded from this funding measure.

2 project types

Type 1: “Research Collaboration” - Academic - 4 year project - amount from 300k€ up to 400k€.

Type 2 “Research & Development” - Academic + Industry partners - 3 year project - amount from 600k€ up to 800k€.

The project proposal must:

• be submitted by research consortia composed of both one French coordinator and one German coordinator, who will each be the contact point for the respective national funding agency.

• be submitted as one proposal per bilateral consortium

• be composed of a document (project description, 15 pages maximum), complemented by an annex presenting the short CVs of the national project leaders and of the key researchers involved (max. 1 page per partner).

Timeline

Call For Project period: 23 October - 21 December 2020 (13:00 CET)

Results: end of March 2021

Start of the project: July 1st, 2021

Links to the CFP

https://anr.fr/fileadmin/aap/2021/aap-faiafg-2021-annexe-fr.pdf (FR)

https://anr.fr/fileadmin/aap/2021/aap-faiafg-2021.pdf (ENG)

https://www.bmbf.de/foerderungen/bekanntmachung-3205.html (DE)

 Contact

In France: ANR, Dr Fanny Lachat fanny.lachat@agencerecherche.fr

 In Germany: DLR, Dr Holger Stegemann DEU-KOOP-PT@dlr.de