13 February 2007

Application Deadline: 1 April 2007

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

The EURO-VO project is soliciting proposals from teams aiming at carrying out astronomical projects driven by the Virtual Observatory concept, and making use of the Virtual Observatory tools and applications. The successful groups will receive support from EURO-VO astronomers to complete their projects by December 2007.

INTRODUCTION TO EURO-VO AND EURO-VO FACILITY CENTRE

The European Virtual Observatory (EURO-VO) Project builds on the research and development experience gained with the Astrophysical Virtual Observatory (AVO) to deploy an operational Virtual Observatory in Europe. Its objectives are technology take-up and VO compliant resource provision, building the technical infrastructure and supporting its utilization by the scientific community. It promotes new science by enabling access to distributed data and computing resources, providing an easy access, retrieval and analysis from archives world-wide.

The EURO-VO Facility Centre (VOFC) is the "public face" of the EURO-VO. Through outreach, support of VO-enabled science projects in the community, and workshops, the VOFC represents a central support structure to facilitate the broad take-up of VO tools by the community.

MOTIVATION AND APPLICATION PROCEDURE

A major goal of the EURO-VO project is to foster the development of new EURO-VO research tools and applications and to encourage the refinement of existing capabilities. A natural and effective means to this end is to promote the exploitation of the opportunities offered by the EURO-VO in carrying out astronomical research.

For this purpose, this call for proposals aims at actively supporting research projects which require the unique capabilities offered by the Virtual Observatory. Any research group from EC Member and Associated States can submit a proposal. The primary goal of the project is to enhance the exploitation of the Virtual Observatory infrastructure and tools for scientific research.

Proposals should clearly outline the science goals, the approach to be taken, and the estimated technical and scientific support required. The areas of research to be supported by this programme may be in any field of astronomy and astrophysics. Although this call is in principle open to any projects making use of VO tools and application, priority will be given to projects based on EURO-VO enabled facilities and tools in carrying out the proposed research.

The VOFC will provide the necessary scientific support and technical contact points to a number of selected teams, to help them carry out VO-driven science. The number of selected projects will depend on the amount of support required.

It is expected that the selected projects will publish their results in peer-reviewed research publications.

Proposals should be submitted via the submission web site no later than April 1, 2007. Additional information can be obtained via the EURO-VO helpdesk pages following the link "Submit a Ticket".

The proposed projects will be reviewed by a panel drawn from the EURO-VO Science Advisory Committee and the EURO-VO project. The VOFC, in coordination with the whole project, will advise the review panel on the technical feasibility of the proposed projects. Proposals will be judged on the basis of science goals, technical feasibility, and the wider impact for the Virtual Observatory. It is anticipated that the results of the selection procedure will be known by the end of April. The projects will need to be completed by the December 2007.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

More information on the EURO-VO web pages