The first phase of the call for proposals to benefit from support from the ENACT engineering pool is now open.
The AI Grand Est ENACT cluster is establishing an engineering pool to support scientific research involving AI engineering. A total of 13 engineers, distributed across the Lorraine and Alsace sites (7 working at Université de Lorraine, and 6 at University of Strasbourg), will support research projects from the initial definition of needs through to the delivery of outputs. In the long term, this support will help disseminate the skills developed within the cluster to the wider socio-economic ecosystem.
During this first opening phase, the call is addressed to researchers from laboratories affiliated with the cluster. A limited number of projects will be selected to receive engineering support (up to 6 months), within a co-construction approach to shaping the pool’s operating model.
The second phase of this call, scheduled to begin in September, will extend the scheme to the entire scientific community in Lorraine and Alsace, based on feedback from Phase 1.
How to apply
- Selection criteria:
- Alignment with the objectives of the AI Grand Est ENACT cluster
- Consistency with the three strategic research themes (Natural Language Processing and large multimodal models, AI for engineering and scientific discovery, digital health)
- Potential impact of the engineering support
- Priority will be given to proposals meeting the following criteria:
- Contribution to strengthening research activity (researchers, publications, international co-publications, patents, licences, start-ups, AI students, etc.)
- Leadership role in France–Germany and European collaboration
- Training (pre-training, continued training, fine-tuning, etc.) of new generative AI and neural network models
- Alignment with one of the cluster’s three thematic axes
- Collaborative research projects with companies will also be considered within a dedicated selection process.
- Application format: free, one page maximum. All proposals, regardless of maturity level, will be considered; however, the following information will facilitate the selection process:
- Name, position, laboratory and research team of the applicant
- Target theme(s)
- Estimated engineering time requested
- Brief description including scientific context, objectives and expected deliverables
- Optional scientific and technical appendix
- Applications must be sent to: enact-pool-inges-contact@univ-lorraine.fr. They will be evaluated by the pool management committee.
- Deadline for submission: April 30.
