The Red Hat Collaboratory at Boston University is seeking proposals from qualified researchers for projects that advance the Collaboratory’s goals: defining and demonstrating an open model for large-scale reproducible systems research toward achieving a future of secure, reliable, scalable, self-operating, distributed, heterogeneous compute platforms that stretch from edge devices to cloud datacenters.
Funds are available to projects proposed by Boston University faculty. Applicants may submit multiple proposals that address separate and distinct research activities. The submission deadline for proposals is midnight Eastern time on October 1, 2021. Final awards will be made on or before December 15, 2021.
The Collaboratory is soliciting proposals in three categories:
- Large-scale projects: [total annual cost < $500,000] These are highly visible projects involving multiple faculty and students, together with a Red Hat business unit. Although these are research projects and should address systems or system problems that have not yet been built or addressed, there should be a fairly high confidence that the research will produce tangible results within the project period.
- Small-scale projects: [< $150,000] These projects explore a more focused element of the Collaboratory goals within an individual researcher’s area of expertise, and include collaboration with at least one Red Hat engineer.This category of proposals may include collaborative experiences that cross disciplinary boundaries, coursework development relevant to the Collaboratory, and initial development projects intended to feed into a later larger-scale project.
- Speculative projects: [< $75,000] These are projects designed to initiate a collaboration. Fundamental systems research, work relevant to the Open Research Cloud Initiative (ORCI), and high-risk projects are all in scope for this category. The committed involvement of a Red Hat engineer is not required.
Projects should generally focus on problems of distributed, operating, security, or network systems whose solution shows promise for advancing their field and impacting industry. PIs planning to submit proposals that require Red Hat collaboration may send a short description of their idea to the Collaboratory team (prop-rhcollab-l@bu.edu) for help with identifying and connecting with potential Red Hat participants.
Any software developed by the projects must be available under an open source license and all results should be made publicly available (for example, through publication). Multi-year projects are encouraged; initial funding may be renewed based on evaluation of the productivity of the project.
Get further information and detailed application instructions on the BU Red Hat Collaboratory website.
