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WP1 Objectives: Determination of present status of European research funding relating to ASTROPARTICLE (WP leader: FOM)
Description of work:
Managerial information will be exchanged between the partners.
Instruments :
Two workshops, with up to 40 participants (2 per agency): one at the beginning and one at the end of the second year. In the first workshop the agencies will collectively define the criteria of the study and their expectations to the task leader. The last workshop will hear and evaluate the final result. Between the first and the last workshop the major agencies and a few selected representative agencies (e.g. northern or eastern countries) will organise “administrative open days” in their headquarters for the members of the consortium (up to 10 such meetings with up to 16 participants). The administrators will then be exposed, during 2 days, to the activities of the visited partner organisations. They will thus get a deep insight into the daily work of the partner councils. This will include knowledge of programmes, administrative responsibilities and general procedures in science funding (counselling, proposals, peer review, grant decision, financing, contracts, follow up).

Task 1.1: Present status of research processing and funding in astroparticle:
(Task Leader MEC/FECYT, assisted by INFN and SNF)
The administrators’ tasks will be to notify the similarities and differences between the home and partner organisation, regarding the general funding philosophy: Which programmes exist? Who can be funded? Individual researchers or laboratories/organisations? Which persons or labs? Which disciplines? What are the funding conditions and prerequisites? Are there any other organisations in the partner’s country funding the same clientele? If relevant: how can funds from other private or public sources be matched? The task leader will be responsible that the required information of his forum summing up the status of the research funding in ASTROPARTICLE physics in all the participating partner organisations is collected and processed. Information available on the same subject from European organisations/schemes like CERN, ESO and ESA will also be taken into account. An equally important sub-task is the collection of information on European countries not belonging to the consortium and non-EU European countries.

Task 1.2: Strategic activities between programs :( Task Leader PPARC assisted by FOM)
The task leader will be in close contact to the leader of task 1.1. His/her mission will be to benchmark the results of these tasks and particularly to identify formal and legal barriers that hinder co-operation, but also to define the least common denominator. Pan-european indicators for performance etc. will be compared with available indicators concerning non-European countries (US, Japan, India, China etc). The experience of existing bi-national or international astroparticle programmes in Europe (e.g gravitational antennas VIRGO and GEO, the telescopes HESS and MAGIC, etc.) will be used in order to find the most suitable forms of cooperation consistent with the national systems also identify the national legal and financial barriers that hinder cooperation and the instalment of transnational observatories. The experience of CERN will be also analysed carefully.
Milestone: White paper on Astroparticle methodology (scientific content, evaluation, budget allocation, benchmarking, decision making and follow-up) and suggestions for possible common procedures in Astroparticle physics.

WP2 Objectives: Definiton of astroparticle physics roadmap and common actions necessary for the astroparticle ERA (WP leader: Partner PPARC)
Description of work:
Roadmap Workshops whose bases will be to process the information resulting from WP1 in order to contribute towards an European Research Area in Astroparticle Physics. The aim of the Workshops will be to prepare the realization of specified goals:
• roadmap and areas of common RTD
• formulation of a common evaluation policy
• a posteriori linking of existing infrastructures.
An important objective is the prototyping of truly generic co-operation agreements on administration, evaluation and funding of joint programs.
Instruments:
Participants of the thematic Roadmap Workshops to be organised in this work package will be a core group of administrators, senior scientists and decision makers responsible for astroparticle physics research in the research funding organisations co-operating in the network, soliciting input from other scientists and administrators as well as external management experts from other national or European bodies like the European Commission, the ESFRI, ESO, ESA, CERN.

Task 2.1: “A roadmap for ASTROPARTICLE”: (Task Leader Partner FOM)
An important aim of the series of Workshops (up to 3) starting on the second half of the first year will be elaborating and releasing a joint roadmap on infrastructures and R&D necessary and a feasibility analysis of the ERA-NET and beyond the network’s funding by the European commission. Central co-ordination activities in this task are to conduct discussions between the participating representatives in the workshops in order to reach the envisaged aims, the development of common review procedures.

Task 2.2: “Formulating comparable evaluation procedures”: (Task Leader Partner PPARC, assisted by FOM)
An important aim of the series of Workshops starting on the second half of the first year will be the formulation of comparable evaluation procedures concerning large infrastructures in Astroparticle Physics.The main aim of the Workshops will be to elaborate and implement new simple and effective common administration and reviewing concepts for individual transnational proposals. Being aware of the difficulties of even a bilateral agreement to realise, the optimal target is the development of procedures accepted by all participating research funding agencies. The workshops already will take into consideration the further integration of other national research councils not yet participating in the network.

Task 2.3: “A posteriori linking of existing infrastructures”: (Task Leader Partner BMBF/PTDESY)
Aim of different thematic Workshops (up to six) in the second year will be to initiate schemes for new joint funding procedures and programmes in co-operative research concerning existing infrastructures, e. g. transnational centre to centre co-operation (virtual transnational labs) and transnational research training groups.
Milestones : Astroparticle physics roadmap


WP3 Objectives: Implementation of new European-wide procedures for large infrastructures (Work package leader: Partner INFN)
Description of work:
The task leaders in this work package will be responsible for organising special programme defining workshops to discuss and to implement the new transnational procedures developed in WP2. This will be realised by envisaging and earmarking research fields and funding schemes suitable for joint programmes and by testing the suitability of the tools by help of concrete research concepts. ASPERA will provide specific information on actual possibilities of transnational proposals at each workshop and will stimulate discussions on the implementation of joint programs. The work package leader will not only supervise the tasks and co-ordinate the co-operation of the task leaders, but will most notably be responsible for the implementation of joint European programs.

Task 3.1: Coordinate common action plan and prepare agreements on common funding of a large projects: (Task Leader Partner INFN assisted by partner MEC/FECYT)
Based on the results of WP2, two workshops of administrators and senior scientists including the direction of participating agencies will prepare a common action plan for the large infrastructures to be funded in the coming years. The workshops will also prepare the alignment of part of the financial resources of the agencies and councils of the consortium.

Task 3.2: Coordinate R&D programs: (Task Leader Partner INFN assisted by partner MEC/FECYT)
The effort of this task is to identify areas where a common or coordinated call on specific R&D areas can be launched, and take the steps towards the implementation of these calls.

Task 3.3: Setting up cooperation agreements on existing infrastructures: (Task Leader Partner BMBF/PTDESY)
A series of large projects in Europe has developed in parallel: gravitational antennas VIRGO/GEO, cherenkov telescopes HESS/MAGIC, neutrino telescopes ANTARES/NEMO/NESTOR, high energy cosmic rays AUGER/EUSO, Dark matter searches (at least 6 different projects) and double beta decay experiments. This task will try to establish cooperation agreements between the researchers of the corresponding projects, so that complementarity more than competition is put forward, and also establishing unified patterns where this is possible.
Milestones :
• Common action plan for the funding of new infrastructures
• Alignment of part of the financial resources of the networking research councils for transnational Astroparticle -based research programs


WP4 Objectives: Consortium common electronic infrastructures, communication and extension (WP leader: Partner BMBF/PTDESY)
Description of work:
The function of WP4 is to strengthen the “corporate identity” of the consortium through a common electronic infrastructure, opening it, at the same time, to other agencies and communicating the achievements of the field and the consortium itself to the European policy makers, belonging to national structures or transnational organisms (ESO,CERN, ESA) and the EU.
The common electronic infrastructure is the object of two tasks:
• The first task, addressed to the agencies members of the consortium and the corresponding scientists, will establish a common database, common electronic mailing system, common agenda structure, intranet facilities etc.
• The second task, opening ASPERA to the world at large, will establish an internet web site, presenting the findings of the consortium, job opportunities, open calls for R&D, important press communications, transeuropean events of ASPERA, access links to all European infrastructures, where possible helping individual experiments to present uniformly their data. It will also be a tool for electronic submission and evaluation of proposals.

The third and fourth task concern outreach and the extension of the project to other European agencies not belonging in the network. The outreach task concerns mainly the relationships of the network with policy makers, fulfilling mainly the functions of a press office.

Task 4.1: Development of joint electronic communication tools and portals: (Task Leader Partner (CNRS assisted by SNF)
The function of the planned electronic portal would be threefold, and it will help
• the archiving and dissemination of all astroparticle related documents to the researchers
• the follow-up of the progress of projects by European managers and/or evaluators
• the information on open calls and other opportunities for the researchers, or for proposal submission
• the creation of a subscription system the restricted use of the database and email facilities

Task 4.2: Internet-based common information system: (Task Leader Partner MEC/FECYT, assisted by partner FCT)
A professional website is very important as external presentation to political decision makers, to the public, to present the results of the expertise resulting in studies and reports, to enable interested applicants and other bodies to find out any information about ASPERA, its programs and its philosophy and even to process proposals and references. A common administration and evaluation procedure will be made available electronically to all partners. The joint electronic communication tools and portals serve as single entry points in order to facilitate the interchange of information and the dissemination of results and to enable an effective joint processing of proposals and European programs.

Task 4.3: Public outreach: (Task Leader Partner CERN)
The ASPERA efforts on this theme will be mainly addressed to national policy makers and ministry officials. The “national open days” when the network science managers from European agencies to visit each country one by one will be widely publicised. We intend to invite local officials, ministers etc. This is a technique used by ECFA (European Committee for Future Accelerators) and has been an important lever arm increasing the European-wide participation to common programs. ASPERA will organize inaugurations, special pan-European celebrations, visits of infrastructures and launching of satellites for the policy makers. This has been up to now very efficient instruments, promoting the discipline’s goals. The task responsible will be the unique entry point for all major European astroparticle projects, concerning announcements of major events and press communiqués to national and European institutions, as well as “global” sites of information (see for instance interactions.org).
The many reports to be compiled in the frame of ASPERA (see deliverables list) will serve as data base for anyone interested. Any publication will be opened for public on the ASPERA web site (see Task 4.2 and 4.3) which will also contain calls for joint transnational proposals and programmes, lists of funded projects as well as final reports of their outcomes, benchmarking studies, statistics, relevant keywords, links to researchers and national and supranational funding organisations etc.

Task 4.4: Coordination office: (Task Leader Partner BMBF)
The task leader is responsible for active contacts and for the transfer of any important information to other non-participating EU member states, EU candidate countries and other European third countries. He/she is the contact point for any new potential ASPERA partner and for any national research council wishing to be associated to the network. He also acts as sub-coordinator of ASPERA.
Milestones : A fully functional electronic portal


WP5 Objectives: Consortium Management (WP leader: Partner CNRS)
Description of work: The ERA-NET administration and management task will be included in this workpackage. The coordinator of ASPERA (CNRS) will assume the overall responsibility. The task leader of the overall management task will organize the overall coordination of the ERANET and the workings of the GB and JS. He will especially coordinate the timely delivery of the “management deliverables” below:

Name
WP
Lead
Nature
Month

D5.1

Short management report on progress of the coordination WP5 CNRS Report January 07
D4.1 Joint electronic communication tools WP4 CNRS Prototype July 07
D4.2 Professional website WP4 MEC/FECYT Prototype July 07
D5.2 Short management report on progress of the coordination WP5 CNRS Report July 07
D5.3 Detailed management report on progress of the coordination WP5 CNRS Report January 08
D5.7 Audit report WP5 CNRS Report January 08
D5.4 Short management report on progress of the coordination WP5 CNRS Report July 08
D5.5 Short management report on progress of the coordination WP5 CNRS Report January 09
D5.6 Detailed management report on progress of the coordination WP5 CNRS Report July 09
D5.8 Audit report WP5 CNRS Report July 09
 
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