What is a common call?
Within ASPERA, it is a process by which we jointly invite, peer review and fund proposals for R&D and design studies to support the realisation of future Astroparticle infrastructures identified in the ASPERA Roadmap. The funding agencies participating in a call agreed to issue a common call for proposals, to have the proposals scientifically reviewed by a common Evaluation Committee and for highly rated proposals to be funded from a virtual common pot. Did this process start in Aspera-1 already?
Absolutely. Two of the goals of ASPERA -1 were to develop common rules and processes for the administration and evaluation of transnational proposals and to launch a common call in specific R&D areas. These formed two of the deliverables of ASPERA-1. The call was also seen as a forerunner of further joint activities in ASPERA-2.
How did you select the theme of the first call?
All the funding agencies in ASPERA were asked for their views on the theme (s) of the first call. Initial thoughts were that we might have an open call for all the future Astroparticle infrastructures in the ASPERA Roadmap, but in the end we went for focussed calls and chose two themes, the very high energy gamma-ray astrophysics and direct dark matter searches for the first call as we felt that these projects were in a mature enough state to benefit now from the funding of design studies and targeted R&D. It then followed that funding agencies which were interested in funding projects in these areas signed up to the implementation agreement for the call.
Three projects have been chosen, but the others didn’t loose?
It is intended that this is just the first of several calls. By targeting these two themes in the first call, we were not saying that the other infrastructures on the roadmap are of lesser scientific value or priority. As I mentioned earlier, it was a matter of timeliness. Further calls are planned in ASPERA-2. The themes of future calls, and national funding agencies that will participate in these calls, will be agreed at a later date.
What about the funding?
Once we agreed on the themes for the call each funding agency was asked to identify how much money it was willing to put into the virtual pot for research projects in this area. The term virtual means, that although the money goes into a common pot, so we know how much we can spend on the various projects, it is virtual in the fact that the actual awarding of the money was still in control of the funding agencies and each funding agency would fund their own researchers. The Evaluation Panel made funding recommendations and the Programme Committee, formed from senior representatives of the funding agencies, made the funding decisions!
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What challenges did you face during the process?
I think one of the most difficult things we had to address was the process by which we do the peer review. Every agency had its own views on funding rules, eligibility requirements, how peer review should be done, how the referees should be selected, what the criteria for assessment are, etc. The biggest achievement of the first call is that we actually managed to come up with a common process. Getting to consensus on these things was quite difficult, but I think the basis for that success was that we did quite a lot of preparatory work before the call in surveying all the funding agencies to find out what their evaluation processes and criteria for evaluation were.
But that is not to say that we will be resting on our laurels. We plan to look very closely at how things went, the lessons learned and how we could improve future calls.
What is the next step?
We are planning to have a second call towards the end of next year. We are just starting general discussions amongst the funding agencies about what the themes of the next call might be. A number of ideas are floating around, but nothing is fixed yet. Ideas include R&D for neutrino mass experiments, prototypes for large neutrino physics, proton decay detectors and dark matter detectors. We also want to explore the feasibility of having a joint call with CERN, given recent discussions at CERN about expanding its activities in areas like Astroparticle Physics.
Submitted by Dirk Lorenzen >> More about the call
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An interview with Deborah Miller, programme manager for particle astrophysics at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) in the UK, who together with Emanuela Pistoia from INFN, formed the Common Call Secretariat for the first ASPERA Common Call.