NWA-ORC program Kickoff Meeting with CORTEX

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In 2018, NWO launched a new type of grant, called the NWA-ORC, where ORC stands for "Onderzoek langs Routes door Consortia" (Research along Routes by Consortia). This program invited applicants to submit proposals to establish long-term (up to 8 years) research consortia with both academic and societal and/or industry partners and focused on research topics of the Dutch Science Agenda (Nederlandse Wetenschaps Agenda, NWA). The NWA-ORC call is part of the NWA-program that NWO realises on behalf of the Ministry of OCW. In 2018, a total of 61 million euros had been made available for this knowledge chain-wide partnership. OCW and NWO expects the consortia to execute excellent research, enable innovation and translate that research into societal impact through knowledge utilization.

ASTRON's Joeri van Leeuwen, working together with several academic and business partners working in the field of machine learning (ML), submitted the CORTEX proposal (Center for Optimal Real-Time machine studies of the Explosive Universe) for the 2018 round. After a rigorous selection process, NWO awarded the CORTEX consortium a 5 MEuro grant to facilitate 6 years of research. Together with CORTEX, 16 other consortia have been funded by the 2018 NWA-ORC call, covering a wide spectrum of societal and science related topics (see https://www.nwo.nl/en/news-and-events/news/2019/06/61-million-euros-for-collaboration-between-knowledge-institutes-and-social-partners-to-study-urgent-issues.html for all awarded programs).

On Nov 1st, 2019, representatives of all 17 awarded consortia came together in NWO-I's new building in Utrecht for a NWA-ORC program kick-off meeting. The goals was not only to celebrate the start of the program, but also to provide help in the translation of the research goals and results to actual societal impact. The morning was spent in workshops to practice the latter, and in the afternoon all 17 consortia delivered a 2-minute pitch on what the main research goal and societal impact of the consortium was. For CORTEX, Joeri delivered the pitch in his usual smooth and punctual way.

The CORTEX consortium is planned to formally start on Dec 1st. ASTRON is the principal partner in this consortium and will handle consortium management and control (Arno Schoenmakers, Remco Berg), outreach and business opportunities (to be hired) and funding distribution to the other six research partners. ASTRON also leads a work package for real-time ML processing and transient detection of data coming from Apertif and LOFAR (by Joeri van Leeuwen, Antonia Rowlinson, John Romein, and others), and will contribute to a second work package to apply ML techniques in imaging pipeline tuning with LOFAR (with Raymond Oonk from SURFsara).

We are looking forward to many exciting opportunities and results from CORTEX (and sure did enjoy the little cakes served at the meeting)..!