Main events
1. ALATNET Marathon
We took an opportunity to obtain significant funding for the ALADIN project
from the European Community, through the 5th Framework Programme for Research
and Development. More precisely, we applied to one of the 3 Horizontal
Programmes, entitled "Improving human research potential and the socio-economic
knowledge base", part A-1 "Research Training (RTN) Networks", which aims
to support the training of young researchers and exchanges between teams.
The application
to this RTN was, itself, a challenge : very short delays, rather thick
EU documentation, quite different rules than those of the previous ALADIN-PECO
or ALADIN-KIT, ...
For example :
-
60% of the funding is to be devoted to long research stays for
young scientists (visitors, either PhD or post-doctoral) in the leading
centers;
-
the rest supports exchanges between teams, visits, participations
to workshops, ...
-
the breakdown of the funding within the leading centers should
also obey to different rules (including level of local grants, ...);
-
... various other rules and quotas appeared in the documentation
and needed a VPP to be computed .. well, the VPP was not necessary but
aspirin and an A3 size table !...
About the constraints :
-
there need to be at least five institutions in the network (i.e.
leading centers : receivers of the visitors), ready to offer good conditions
for PhD or Post-Doc studies on ALADIN-related subjects;
-
the visitors should not be coming from a country of these five
institutions;
-
this means that some NMS should have to be receivers only (of
visitors and funds) and the other ones senders only (of visitors); moreover
there will have to be an open competition for all the opened visitors positions,
some candidatures from outside the ALADIN world having to be considered
in fairness if received.
Of course, an human reaction would have been to give up but 
is a magic project, isn't it ?
So, correspondents
of eligible NMSs (all ALADIN partners excepted Croatia, Moldova and Morocco,
not eligible for this EU application) were contacted on the 5th of May
and an endless round of emails, fax, phone calls ... began.
On 21st of May, the principles of our proposal were defined. Paperwork
could begin. IRM was responsible for collecting all papers.
The first 15 pages flew to Brussels from Budapest, Ljubljana, Prague
and Toulouse : they were administrative forms filled and signed by the
5 receivers :
-
title and Proposal identifier : ALATNET (for ALA din
Training NETwork)
Coordinator : Meteo-France (Toulouse)
Partners: IRM (Brussels)
CHMI (Prague)
HMS (Budapest)
HMIS (Ljubljana)
-
Proposal Summary
-
Individual Participant Profile/Information
The other part (20 pages, mainly written by Jean-François Geleyn
and Dominique Giard with informations from all partners) was an interesting
exercise. It was the proposal description :
-
research topic
-
project objectives
-
scientific originality
-
research method
-
work plan
-
collective expertise
-
collaboration
-
organization and management
-
training need
-
justification of the appointment of young researchers
-
training program
-
...
Everything was ready on Wednesday 2nd of June in the morning ... and deadline
was Wednesday 2nd of June at 17.00 for deposit in EU Commission in Brussels
!...
The package with the original and the photocopies of the proposal was
delivered by Josette Vanderborght's hand to the EU Commission (a copy can
be sent on request to the correspondants).
For the time being, we obtained in exchange an "Acknowledgment of Receipt".
Hopefully, we will get something else ... in case of success, this funding
will of course benefit to all ALADIN community, directly or indirectly.
The proposals will be evaluated by the EU during the summer; we will
know more this autumn. Keep an eye on the "News" button of our server for
latest news ...
2. The new MoU : the end of a long journey
The new MoU has been signed by all Partners after a 4 month travel with
stop-overs at NMSs of the 14 countries involved in ALADIN project ... and
visited in alphabetic order (see Newsletter 13).
3. Cleaned cycle AL11 in Toulouse environment
Cy21t1 and AL11 are now ready. it is important to switch quickly to
this cycle. The intermediate cycle al10 is not supposed to be exported,
though a version was installed in Prague for validation purpose only. Forget
about cy20/al10 !!
Since an important informatic cleaning took place between AL10 and AL11,
it is not possible to leave branches on AL10 with the hope that somebody
else will carry it on to the next full cycle. Therefore, everybody who
has still interesting things up the leaves must move his developments on
AL11. An automatic cleaning tool is available , for moving a branch nicely
from 10 to 11.
