TU Delft Safety & Security Institute Seed Funding

Deadline Wednesday October 27 (midnight)

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 in initial and more advanced phases.

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 encourages the involvement of at least two (and preferably three) faculties, we have left the option open to incentivize collaboration in safety and security within one faculty. A proposal submitted by applicants from only one faculty, needs to demonstrate 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, networking efforts and preparation for larger research grant applications, development of new teaching material, small scale demonstrations of potential use cases of envisioned research, hosting costs for prominent international guest researchers (no fees), organizational costs of workshops and other joint activities, costs made for setting-up joint research activities, joint activities for master or PhD students, etc. We do not cover writing one’s own hours on a seed funding project. Hiring a new person or extending an existing contract as long as the purpose of this extension is clear and fits the aims of the seed funding is possible. 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? While seed funding needs to aim at a well-defined small-scale short-term goal, it needs to be step in a larger trajectory. How is it a steppingstone towards larger goals for safety and security research at TU Delft? What are your short-term and long-term goals? How does the proposed activity help to achieve these goals? 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.
5. We encourage collaborations with other TU Delft initiatives, for example other institutes and Delft Research Initiatives. Collaborating with The Green Village [2] could help you in gathering empirical data, information, or a demonstration setup, which could strengthen your proposal.

4. To take into account

1. The full funding amount is transferred to the main applicant’s financial code soon after the funding is awarded and should be spent within one year.
2. We require 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. We are happy to discuss these with you.
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.

Proposals can be sent to our mailbox tudssi@tudelft.nl before Wednesday October 27 midnight.

You can contact Eveline Vreede 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