Funding / Collaborative R&D Opportunity - Hartree National Centre for Digital Innovation

[Joe Weston]

Background

What is The Hartree Centre?

The Hartree Centre (part of the Science and Technology Facilities Council) is the UK's centre of excellence for challenge-led innovation and collaborative R&D in advanced digital technologies. The Hartree Centre specialises in HPC, AI, and Data Science, and is home to the UK's most powerful supercomputer dedicated to solving industrial challenges.

The Hartree National Centre for Digital Innovation (HNCDI) is a new £210m collaborative partnership between The Hartree Centre and IBM Research. 

The purpose of the programme is to:

1. Enable businesses and public sector organisations to adopt digital innovations, such as AI and quantum computing, by providing a dynamic and supportive expert environment.
2. Provide an environment where UK organisations of all sizes can explore the latest technologies, develop proofs-of-concept and apply them to industry and public sector challenges for productivity, innovation and economic growth.
3. Help organisations navigate the possibilities, and de-risk investment, of new technologies.
4. Support organisations in planning and taking their next steps in their digital transformation journey.

Important: We are looking for challenges where off-the-shelf solutions are currently not available – think TRL 3-6, commonly known as ‘The Valley of Death’.

HNCDI is structured in to four work streams, these are the access points into the programme for organisations.

Work Streams

Explore: Proof of Concept

What: Applying digital and AI technologies to industry challenges. The Explore work stream will deliver 104 projects, each being up to 18 person months of support over a 9-month (max) period.  

Benefit of Participating: Provides the opportunity, through (zero-cost) proof of concepts to explore and evaluate data-driven AI technologies to help enhance your productivity and technical capability. 

How to Engage: Initial enquires through Hartree’s Business Development Team. Contact joseph.weston@stfc.ac.uk

Cost to Participating Organisations: Participation in Explore projects will incur zero costs.

Outcome: Provides the opportunity to understand ‘does this technology work with my data on my use case’.  

 

Excelerate: Application

What: Embedding digital solutions across industry and public sector.  The Excelerate work stream will deliver 32 projects, each being up to 42 months of support over a 14-month (max) period.

Benefit of Participating: Enables (further) development and implementation of practical AI and data driven solutions within your organisation.  A case of ‘I want it!  How do I integrate this into my current work-flow?’

How to Engage: Initial enquires through Hartree’s Business Development Team. Contact joseph.weston@stfc.ac.uk

Cost to Participating Organisations:  Each organisation participating in an Excelerate project will be required to contribute ~£300k. This contribution can be in-kind (data, staff time), in-cash or a combination of both.  

Outcome:  Implementation of practical AI and data driven solutions in to an organisations work-flows.

 

Emerge: Future Resilience

What: Driving future investment decisions in emerging computing technologies such as quantum computing.  The Emerge work stream will deliver 20 projects, each being up to 18 person months of support over a 9-month (max) period.  

Benefit of Participating: Knowing how to prepare for and when to invest in, the right emerging digital technologies such as quantum computing.

How to Engage: Initial enquires through Hartree’s Business Development Team. Contact joseph.weston@stfc.ac.uk

Cost to Participating Organisations: Participation in Emerging technologies projects will incur zero costs.

Outcome:  Helping organisations to drive future investment decisions in emerging technologies such as quantum computing.

 

Explain: Skills

What: Helping participating organisations advance their digital skills through providing industry relevant and accessible training in areas such as high performance computing, data analytics and AI.

• 5000 training places
• Over 55 training courses
• Multiple levels: Introductory, Learner, Independent User and Practitioner
• Delivery Method: Self Learning (Intro), Online, Hybrid Presentation (Learner, Ind. User) and Presential only (Practitioner)

Benefit of Participating: Provides the opportunity to tackle the digital skills gap within your organisation and widens your talent pool.

How to Engage: Initial enquires through Hartree’s Business Development Team. Contact joseph.weston@stfc.ac.uk

Cost to Participating Organisations:  Access to the training courses in Explain will incur zero costs to the participating organisations.

Outcome: Increased digital readiness for organisations across the UK

 

For more info visit www.hartree.stfc.ac.uk or contact Joseph Weston joseph.weston@stfc.ac.uk