Access to AImageLab-HPC computational resources - GPU time, WORK storage, and associated SLURM accounts - is granted through a formal proposal process. All requests, regardless of project size, must follow this process. Proposals are evaluated by a scientific and technical committee before a final decision is made.

Overview

The proposal process proceeds through the following stages:

1. Submission - The applicant submits a proposal describing the scientific work and the resources required.
2. Peer review - The committee assigns scientific and technical reviewers, who independently assess the proposal and provide scored evaluations.
3. Meta-review and decision - The committee synthesises the reviews into a meta-review and takes a final decision (approved or rejected).
4. Provisioning - If approved, a project is created together with a SLURM account and a WORK storage allocation. All named team members are added immediately.

The applicant and the Principal Investigator receive email notifications at submission and again when a decision is reached.

Who Can Submit

Any registered AImageLab-HPC user may submit a proposal. The applicant does not need to be the Principal Investigator: for example, a PhD student or collaborator may submit a proposal and designate a faculty member as PI.

The named PI must hold - or be eligible to hold - a structured role in the research group (Full Professor, Associate Professor, RTT, RTD-A/B). Students and non-structured personnel cannot serve as PI.

Project Types

Each proposal must be submitted under one of the project types listed below. The type determines the maximum annual budget (in standard hours), the maximum project duration, and whether proof of external funding is required.

Budget units: budgets are expressed in standard hours (stdh). Because a single GPU billed for one hour costs 6 stdh (see Budget and Accounting), you can estimate the equivalent GPU-hours as stdh ÷ 6.

Code	Type	Annual budget	Max duration	Proof of funding required
B	Large research project connected to a European or international competitive project	300,000 stdh	48 months	Yes
BI	Large industrial research project	300,000 stdh	48 months	Yes
C	Medium research project connected to a national competitive project or a small industrial research project	60,000 stdh	48 months	Yes
T	Blue sky project, not connected to a competitive project	30,000 stdh	12 months	No
D	PhD student support project	30,000 stdh	36 months	No
F	Support to teaching, including group projects	60,000 stdh	12 months	No
E	MSc thesis project	12,000 stdh	6 months	No

Choosing the right type:

• Use B or BI for large externally funded projects (e.g. H2020, Horizon Europe, ERC, other EU or international grants).
• Use C for medium-sized national grants or small industrial collaborations (e.g. PRIN).
• Use T for exploratory or unfunded research with no associated grant.
• Use D for PhD student allocations. The project duration can span up to 36 months to cover a typical PhD cycle.
• Use F for courses, labs, or group projects with students.
• Use E for individual MSc thesis work.

If you are unsure which type applies, contact the HPC Helpdesk before submitting.

Preparing Your Proposal

The proposal form is divided into four sections. All sections must be completed carefully; incomplete or insufficiently detailed proposals will be rejected at the review stage.

Basic Information

Field	Notes
Title	A concise, descriptive title for the project.
Description	A single-line summary (minimum 10 characters).
Field of Science	Select the research field that best describes the work.
Principal Investigator	The faculty member or structured researcher responsible for the project. Leave blank if you are the PI.
Research Team	Optional. List additional participants who will need access to the project resources. The PI is added automatically and does not need to be listed here.
Start date	Planned project start date.
End date	Planned project end date. Must not exceed the maximum duration for the chosen project type.

Scientific Description

This section is the primary basis for the scientific evaluation. Both fields accept Markdown formatting and have a maximum length of 20,000 characters.

Description of Research

Provide a thorough account of the scientific work to be carried out. This section must include:

• Scientific framework and motivation.
• Project objectives.
• Theoretical and computational methods to be employed.
• A list of the applications to be used, with evidence of their performance on parallel architectures (scalability and load balancing).
• A detailed workplan and timetable (GANTT chart or equivalent).
• A discussion of the proposed research relative to competing work in the field.
• The expected scientific advances that justify the requested allocation.

Reviewers from your discipline will read this section to assess scientific merit. Reviewers from other disciplines will read it to enable cross-disciplinary comparison. The description must be sufficient for both audiences.

Computational Approach

Provide quantitative evidence of the HPC performance of the applications you intend to use. This must include:

• Scalability and efficiency data, in strong and/or weak scaling mode.
• I/O performance characterisation where relevant.
• Benchmark data in tabular or graphical form, including speedup curves.
• Single-node performance data where applicable.

Proposals that do not include concrete scaling data are unlikely to be approved.

Resource Request

Field	Notes
GPU hours/year	The number of GPU hours per year required. 1 standard budget hour equals 1/6 GPU hour. Cannot exceed the maximum for the chosen project type.
WORK storage (GB)	The amount of WORK filesystem storage required, in gigabytes. Minimum 1 GB.

Request only what the project genuinely requires. The committee may approve a reduced budget if the requested amount is not adequately justified by the scientific description or scaling data.

Funded Project Documentation

For certain project types - in particular those tied to externally funded grants - you will be required to upload:

• The text of the funded project.
• Proof of approval (e.g. an official approval letter from the funding body).

These fields are mandatory for the relevant project types; the form will not submit without them.

After Submission

Once submitted, the proposal enters Pending status. A confirmation email is sent to the applicant and, if different, to the named PI.

The status of a proposal can be followed at any time by visiting My proposals in the ColdFront portal. Clicking on a proposal opens the detail page, which is updated throughout the review process.

When the committee begins assigning reviewers, the proposal status changes to Under Review. No information about the reviewers or their evaluations is visible at this stage.

Review Process

The committee assigns one or more reviewers to each proposal. There are two review types:

• Scientific review - evaluates the research objectives, methods, and expected outcomes.
• Technical review - evaluates the computational approach, the scaling data, and the suitability of the requested resources.

Reviewers receive an invitation by email and may accept or decline. Each completed review includes a written assessment and a score from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest).

Once all reviews are received, the committee chair writes a meta-review synthesising the individual assessments. This step is required before a final decision can be taken.

The review process is confidential. Reviewer identities and scores are not disclosed before the decision is published.

The Decision

When a decision is taken, the applicant and the PI receive an email notification. The proposal status changes to either Approved or Rejected.

The proposal detail page then shows:

• The final decision.
• The committee meta-review.
• Each completed individual review, including the reviewer’s name, review type, score, and written assessment.

If the proposal is rejected, the meta-review will explain the committee’s reasoning. You may address the concerns raised and resubmit a revised proposal at any time.

Project Provisioning

If the proposal is approved, the committee assigns a project code (for example, h2020_elliot) and may adjust the approved GPU hours budget or WORK storage quota relative to what was requested. The approved values - rather than the originally requested ones - are used during provisioning.

The following resources are created automatically.

Project

A project is created in ColdFront under the assigned code. The PI is the project owner. All team members listed in the proposal are added as project users.

SLURM Account

A SLURM account is created using the project code as the account name. The approved annual GPU hours budget is assigned to the account. All project members are added to the account.

WORK Storage Allocation

A WORK filesystem allocation is created using the project code as the storage group name. The approved storage quota is applied. All project members are added to the allocation.

Access Dates

All allocations are active from the start date to the end date specified in the proposal. Allocation status and expiry dates are visible in the ColdFront portal.

After Provisioning

Once provisioned, the project is active and all named members have immediate access to the SLURM account and WORK storage.

If further users need to be added after provisioning, the PI can manage project membership through the ColdFront portal. New members added to the project can subsequently be added to the allocations by the PI or by a system administrator.

For any questions regarding the proposal process, contact the HPC Helpdesk.