TU Delft Safety & Security Institute Seed Funding – Deadline October 30, 2020

The TU Delft Safety & Security Institute aims to strengthen the position and increase the impact of Safety & Security research and education by providing seed funding for relevant transdisciplinary collaborative activities at TU Delft.

We wish to limit the burden of preparing a proposal to a minimum. Please send us by email a short document (max. 500 words), including the following:

1. Applicants title, name, academic discipline, affiliation and contact information.

There should be only one contact person. Researchers in Safety & Security related areas of all faculties of TU Delft may apply, but the main applicant has to be a scientific staff member (postdoc, assistant, associate or full professor), with a position at one of the five participating faculties.[1] We specifically invite early career researchers to apply.

2. Activity & Amount

A subsidy of max. 15 kEuro can be requested, depending on the number of faculties involved. While the institute incentivizes the involvement of at least two (and preferably three) faculties, we have left the option open to incentivize thinking about safety and security within one faculty. If a proposal is submitted by applicants from only one faculty, they need to show that the proposed work is sufficiently interdisciplinary and preferably carried out as a collaboration between different departments in that faculty. Applicants from only one faculty can request up to 5k, two faculties up to 10k, and three up to 15k.

Examples of activities that can be funded include, but are not limited to, the networking efforts, preparation for larger research grant applications, the development of new teaching material, small scale demonstrations of the potential use cases of the envisioned research, hosting prominent international guest researchers, organization of workshops and other joint activities, costs made for setting up joint research activities, joint activities for master or PhD students, etc.

Working with important TU Delft initiatives, for example other institutes and Delft Research Initiatives is incentivized. Collaborating with The Green Village[2] could help you in gathering empirical data, information, or a demonstration setup, which could strengthen your proposal. We do not cover writing one’s own hours on a seed funding project, but do fund specific activities such as hiring a new person or extending an existing contract as long as the purpose of this extention is clear and fits the aims of the seed funding. This could, for instance, be for preparing a grant proposal. You must include a breakdown of costs to motivate the requested amount.

3. Aims & Audience

What do you aim to achieve with your activity? What are your short-term and long-term goals? And, how does the proposed activity help to achieve these goals? While seed funding needs to focus on a small-scale short-term goal, how do you plan to use this funding as a steppingstone towards larger goals for safety and security research at TU Delft? This is the most important part of your proposal. We look at the following characteristics of your proposal:

1. Setting the scene for future activities such as external funding.
2. Allowing for transdisciplinary cooperation (i.e. interdisciplinary cooperation as well as cooperation with non-academic stakeholders, such as in policy, industry, NGOs).
3. Potential for showcasing TU Delft safety & security research to the outside world.
4. Societal relevance.

4. To take into account

1. The full funding amount is transferred to the applicants financial code soon after the funding is awarded and should be spent within one year.
2. We request a publicly available report on the activity (e.g., a webpage on the institute’s website featuring a written or visual report, a short movie, etc.).
3. The proposal should be in line with the Delft Safety & Security  institute’s focus themes and aims.
4. Upon request, results and other news updates of the activity will be shared for TU Delft Safety & Security’s communication such as our website, news items, and year report.
5. The funding from TU Delft Safety & Security is acknowledged in the project team’s communications as well as any presentation or publication that follows based on this funding.

You can submit your proposal until October 30 (midnight) by email to Eveline Vreede
You can also contact her for inquiries. 

[1] Faculties of Aerospace Engineering, Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Applied Sciences, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics & Computer Science, and Technology, Policy and Management.

[2] The Green Village offers the use of facilities available at their living lab (ICT, Dataplatform, physical existing experimental and demonstration setups) for the seed-funding activities. You could contact The Green Village for more information via info@thegreenvillage.org