3-i VELLA - THE THIRD CALL

THE THIRD CALL FOR PROPOSALS IN THE FRAME OF VELLA TRANSNATIONAL ACCESS IS NOW OPEN

THE DEADLINE IS MARCH 20TH, 2009

The Transnational Access (TA) Activities are activities planned to be carried out in the frame of the VELLA project, which main objective are to promote the access of researchers, universities and firms to the existing infrastructures and knowledge, in order to increase the competitiveness of the European industry, to train the researchers in using the EU infrastructures during the three years duration of the project and to help the human mobility between and towards the laboratories.

TWO KINDS OF PROPOSALS CAN BE SUBMITTED:

Proposals for Transnational Access, for the access to the infrastructures
Proposals for Human Mobility, to support the mobility of researchers

RULES OF PARTICIPATION

1) PROPOSALS FOR TRANSNATIONAL ACCESS - Overview
In Europe there are large facilities and several small loops that are constituting an important technological platform in the field of materials studies and liquid metal chemistry. An important action of VELLA is grouping those small loops in an homogenous distributed laboratory which would complement the European capabilities offered by the large facilities. All these facilities can give access to researchers and users (namely SME) creating the unique opportunity of the accessibility to a large European common laboratory.
Virtual laboratories: MATLAB is a virtual laboratory initiated to meet the willing of different laboratories spread through the EU to act as a unique structure, in order to offer the opportunity to a large amount of researchers coming from every part of the Community to perform their test campaigns.
Within this virtual lab it is possible to perform compatibility tests among different structural materials and heavy liquid metals such as Lead and Lead-bismuth.
The possible tests include tensile, fatigue, fracture toughness, creep and corrosion investigations on irradiated and unirradiated materials. The corrosion science laboratory, comprises both facilities for flowing liquid metal and facilities for stagnant tests.

Parts of MATLAB, in fact, are LECOR & CHOEPE III (ENEA, Italy), COLONRI I&II (NRI, Czech Republic), LINCE (CIEMAT, Spain), CORRIDA (FZK, Germany) and CICLAD (CEA, France) for corrosion tests of unirradiated materials in flowing Lead and Lead-Bismuth. Also LIMETS I&II (SCK.CEN, Belgium), COSTA 1-6 (FZK, Germany) and COLIMESTRA (CEA, France) belong to MATLAB. They are stagnant devices for irradiated materials (the first one) and for unirradiated materials (the last two devices).

CHEMLAB is virtual laboratory on lead physic and chemistry science which is devoted to the chemistry control related studies of Lead-Bismuth eutectic systems, such as the oxygen control and monitoring, as well as the other impurities control in both the liquid and the gas phases.
It comprises ELEFANT (FZD, Germany), STELLA (CEA, France), OCEAN & THESYS (FZK, Germany) and CHEOPE II (ENEA, Italy).

Large facilities:

“CIRCE” pool type facility for the study of thermal – hydraulics issues
“TALL” was originally designed to investigate the thermal-hydraulic phenomena for normal and transient conditions of the accelerator driven system.
“KALLA-THEADES” loop type facility having relevant dimension for thermal-hydraulic studies and components test.

This VELLA infrastructure concept makes these five laboratories easily accessible by researchers and, among them, the two distributed laboratories are enough flexible to give integrated answer to relatively complex questions (i.e. characterisation of materials, qualification of instruments and technologies). Object to the success of VELLA, these facilities could be really seen as a unique Research Infrastructure ready to support the EU effort in this field. Also, the concept itself of an exchange of people, knowledge and know how is actually part of a free European community attitude, inside which the information sharing and people mobility play a fundamental role.
Who can participate?To be eligible to benefit from access to the infrastructure under the contract, a user group (the group/ person making the proposal) must satisfy the following two conditions:

• both the user group leader and the majority of the users must come from Member States or Associated States;
• both the user group leader and the majority of the users must come from a country other than the country(ies) where the legal entity(ies) operating the infrastructure is(are) established.The second condition shall not apply when the access provider is an international European interest organisation or the JRC.

When the infrastructure is composed of several research facilities operated by different legal entities, the second condition shall apply to each facility.Only user groups that are entitled to disseminate the knowledge they have generated under the project are eligible to benefit from access to the infrastructure under the contract. The sole exception to this rule shall be user groups from an SME that wish to use the infrastructure for the first time.

Member states:
Austria, Belgium, Cyprus ,Czech Republic , Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia , Lithuania , Luxemburg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands, The Slovak Republic, United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Romania.

Associated States:
Iceland , Israel, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey

Financial Support
For what concerns the access to the infrastructures, the user group should clearly indicate in the proposal the requested access time. If the proposal will be accepted, the costs for the access to the facility will be paid directly by VELLA.
If a financial support for the scientists participating in the Transnational Access is required, a separated application for a Human Mobility has to be submitted and what the conditions for the Human Mobiliy are applied (see 2. Proposal for Human Mobility).

2) PROPOSALS FOR HUMAN MOBILITY
Overview
Mobility support will be granted to both the scientists coming from VELLA partners working on joint research activities and the scientists coming from European countries or institutes outside the VELLA consortium and participating to a transitional access.

Who can participate?
Are eligible to benefit from human mobility support:

Scientists coming from the institutions participating in VELLA initiative and working on the joint research activities.
Scientists coming from Member States or Associated States, outside the VELLA consortium, and participating in a transitional access.

Financial Support
A financial support is foreseen through the participation in a human mobility action, submitting the “VELLA-Human Mobility” proposal, only for travel and subsistence expenses.
In a Human Mobility action, the total time for which the support is requested has to be clearly indicated in the proposal.
Travel costs will be covered up to a maximum of 500 €, while the subsistence costs will be paid up to a maximum of 150 €/day.

PROCEDURE TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL

THE PROCEDURE TO SUBMIT PROPOSALS IS THE SAME FOR TRANSNATIONAL ACCESS AND HUMAN MOBILITY PROJECTS

Please use the relevant form to prepare your proposal:
Form for Transnational Access proposals (download TA_form) .PDF 31,9 Kb
Form for Human Mobility proposals (download HM_form) .PDF 28 Kb

Please do not make your proposal longer than necessary, and include only information specific to the project. Proposals longer than 5 pages will not be accepted. Font must be Arial 11pt, references only may be written with a smaller font. Please include a letter from the facility stating that the facility will actually be available.If you wish to apply for Human Mobility associated with your proposal, please fill in the relevant part of the proposal form. VELLA fellowships should be used to allow or facilitate the work of a young researcher in one of the facilities. Note that personal data on the candidate are requested.
Send your proposals to the VELLA PO by e-mail ( mariano.tarantino@enea.it ), not later than March 20th, 2009.
Please use “VELLA - Call 03” as subject of your mail.
The proposals will be transferred with minimum delay to the Scientific Access Panel and to the Technical Advisory Committee for the evaluation. The TAC and the SAP will examine all the received proposals and, then, will give their recommendations by May 15th, 2009. The Executive Board will meet shortly after (not later than the end of May 2009), in order to select the proposals and allocate the grant.