Funding, News and Announcements

ACENET is a consortium of universities in Atlantic Canada providing advanced computing resources, expertise and training to researchers from any discipline. We are the regional partner of Compute Canada, the umbrella organization responsible for Advanced Research Computing in Canada. Our resources include high performance, GPU and big data computing, storage, high-speed secure file transfer for terabytes of data, cloud environment development space, and specialized research portals. Our experts can help researchers define their computing needs, optimize and troubleshoot code, customize tools and manage advanced computing equipment. We also provide a wide range of general and customized training for researchers and students from novice to advanced, at both the individual and group level. For more information, please visit our website. 

We invite you to review the following information from Compute Canada on the 2016 Resource Allocation Competition. This competition is intended for researchers who have had difficulty obtaining sufficient resources to meet current usage needs or expect difficulty because of projected increased usage in the coming year.

Application deadline is October 8.  Further details can be found below. If you are interested in applying, or would like further information, please email our technical support staff at support@ace-net.ca. 

Compute Canada Resource Allocation Competition 2016 Call for Proposals Now Available

The Resource Allocation Competition (RAC) is granted on a one-year basis and so applicants must re-apply for a new allocation every year. Any individual who is eligible to apply to national granting councils for funding is eligible to apply for an allocation. The RAC is open to projects from all disciplines, from humanities to engineering. The allocation requests are peer-reviewed and awarded based on scientific merit, quality of the research team, and development of highly-qualified personnel (HQP).

Please note that people applying for RAC are NOT required to submit a letter of intent but just a full application with the information specified in the RAC 2016 Call for Proposals.

Who Should Apply?

• All applicants must be registered users in the Compute Canada DataBase (CCDB).
   
• You should apply if you or your research group need more than twice the amount of a default allocation available in any of the Compute Canada systems.
   
• You should apply if you’ve had difficulty obtaining sufficient resources to meet your current usage needs or you expect difficulty because of projected increased usage in the coming year, you should consider applying to the RAC.
   
• In some cases, requests may be handled outside of the formal competition process, particularly if the request is only slightly over our systems’ default allocation levels or if your usage can be split over multiple systems.
   
• If you haven’t participated in a RAC competition before, we strongly recommend you first consult with a member of our technical team to determine whether your resource request matches the competition criteria.

New this year

Common Canadian CV (CCV): PIs and co-PIs will be required to upload their CCV with their application for resources on CCDB. This will make it easier for applicants to upload their CVs, standardize its format, and facilitate the work of the expert review committees when evaluating the quality of the research team.

RAC Glossary: A comprehensive list of terms and acronyms used in the competition and application process has been included in the RAC Call for Proposals and is available on the Compute Canada website. Please consult this document when preparing your application.

Data Privacy & Security: You will need to indicate in your application if your data are subject to special privacy and/or security considerations of which Compute Canada should be aware (e.g., personal health information, physical access to datasets, provincial or federal legislation, etc.).

Expert Review Committee: Applicants may choose the scientific committee they would like to review their proposals. However, the RAC Administrative Committee reserves the right to assign the proposal to another committee if necessary.
Alignment with federal Science and Technology Research

Priority areas: While we do not use federal or provincial priorities as part of our assessment criteria, we do need to report on the research we support through our competitions, including alignment with priority areas. The information you provide in this section therefore strengthens our funding case.

Important Dates:

Tuesday, September 1st: CCDB submission area activated. Applicants may upload RAC applications starting from this date. Fast Track and RPP full applications, both by invite only, may also be submitted starting from this date.    
Friday, September 25th – 4:00 pm EDT: Fast Track submissions due.    
Thursday, October 8th - 4:00 pm EDT: All RAC & RPP full applications due.    

For more information on Compute Canada’s RAC Competition, please refer to the 2016 RAC Call for Proposals or visit the 2016 Resource Competitions page on the Compute Canada website.