The First FFplus Open Call for Business Experiments was Successful: 19 Sub-projects were Selected for Funding
The First FFplus Open Call for Business Experiments was Successful: 19 Sub-projects were Selected for Funding
About
The first FFplus Open Call for Business Experiments (Type 1) addresses the uptake of HPC by SMEs in order to solve specific business challenges of SMEs that have had no prior use of, or experience with, HPC services. The indicative total funding budget for all sub-projects funded under this call was € 4M.
Statistics
The FFplus project is pleased to announce the results of its first open call for Business Experiments proposals, referred to as Open Call-1, Type-1. The call opened on June 21, 2024 and closed on September, 4. A total of 126 proposals were received and all eligible proposals were evaluated in a two-stage, consensus-based review involving external expert evaluators. Each proposal was independently evaluated by two experts, and a consensus review result was then written with the help of a moderator.
As a result of this process, 19 sub-projects were selected for funding based on their impact, the soundness of the technical concept, the quality of the proposing consortium and the deployment of requested resources.
Country Statistics
In total, 126 proposals were received, including 220 organisations from 30 European countries. The 19 funded sub-projects consists of a total of 43 organisations including 34 SMEs (79% of all organisations) and 9 other organisations from 15 countries, with Italy and Greece leading the field in the number of selected proposals containing participants from their countries.
Since one of the FFplus Open Call objectives was to broaden the geographical base of SMEs exploiting HPC technologies and services, awarding the first 19 sub-projects to consortia involving 15 European countries demonstrates a clear success. The sub-projects involve participants from the following countries: Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Greece, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Serbia, Spain and Slovenia.
The total Open Call-1 budget for Type 1 was €4M, while each FFplus Type-1 sub-project was limited to a total funding of € 200,000 aggregated over all its partners. The 19 selected experiments were awarded a total funding budget of €3.7 million.
Small and Medium Enterprise Participation
Of the 43 organisations participating in the selected experiments, 34 (or 79%) are Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs). This is significant since the main objective of the FFplus project is to demonstrate the business value achievable by the use of HPC resources or services for SMEs.
End-User Domains
Each of the FFplus Open Call-1 Type 1 proposals targets a specific economic end-user sector, aiming to accelerate innovation and create business value within that domain. Among all received proposals, the Energy and Manufacturing sectors account for 19 (15%) and 14 (12%) proposals, respectively. These are followed by Health with 13 proposals and Agriculture & Food with 12 proposals.
Regarding the funded sub-projects, the Energy and Manufacturing sectors account for 6 and 5 sub-projects, respectively. Maritime and Agriculture & Food follow with 2 funded sub-projects each. The graphic below illustrates the distribution of user sectors for the funded sub-projects. The manufacturing domain contains several industrial activities, from maintenance prediction for ships to the development of a pre-operative assistant for graft surgeries.
Technologies
The word cloud shows the used technologies for the selected business experiments: there is a strong focus on AI technologies: generative AI, neural networks, transformers and deep learning play a role in many of the selected sub-projects. Additionally, a lot of other topics from the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering) and Simulation domains (e.g. optimization, digital twins, surrogate models or Multiphysics) feature AI prominently.
Business Experiments started on February, 1st and will be running for 15 months. When the experiment is successfully concluded, it results in a success story, inspiring the Industry community.
List of funded Business Experiment sub-projects
|
Country of Coordinator |
Business Experiment Title |
|
Italy |
Leveraging HPC for ML Surrogate Models and Data-Driven MPC in PEMFC Optimization |
|
Italy |
HPC for RF Subsystems |
|
Greece |
HPC-Enhanced Genomic Selection for Climate-Resilient Crop Breeding |
|
Greece |
Aerodynamic and Structural Optimization of Modular Bicycles Using HPC |
|
Greece |
AI-enabled Platform for Monitoring and Maintenance of Industrial Equipment |
|
Italy |
High-Performance Centrifugal Compressor for Supercritical CO2 |
|
Italy |
Exergy for Fortissimo+ Improved Sealing System |
|
Norway |
High Throughput Numerical Simulations with HPC and AI for Precision Engineering in Welding and Additive Manufacturing |
|
Italy |
GenAI4add |
|
Spain |
HPC-based Efficiency Optimization of Industrial Fired Preheaters |
|
Italy |
Empowering Competitiveness in the Design of Rowing Boats using AI and HPC |
|
Netherlands |
Semiconductor Metrology with Nanometre Precision Powered by High-Performance Computing |
|
Serbia |
Damage Control |
|
Italy |
Pre-operative Assistant Based on Data-Driven Approaches for Vascular Grafts Surgery |
|
Denmark |
AI-Driven Root Weed Detection and Precision Spot Spraying for Sustainable Agriculture |
|
Slovenia |
Advanced Multi-Objective Optimization of Energy Management Systems Using Deep Neural Networks and HPC for Real-Time, Multi-Step Energy Forecasting |
|
Montenegro |
Transforming Business Culture and Hiring Through High-Performance Computing |
|
Germany |
NowcastAI |
|
Czech Republic |
Optimization of Low-speed Characteristics & Performance of Aircraft |