Mandatory Outline as a Basis for Applications for Research Centres for Artificial Intelligence (AI Centres)

In 2024, the Research Council will announce up to NOK 850 million for four to six AI research centres in the range of NOK 75-200 million. The AI research centres will have a duration of five years and start-up in 2025. The call for proposals is divided into two parts: First a call for proposals with a deadline of Friday 7 June 2024 at 13:00 CET, followed by a main call for proposals with a tentative deadline of 15 January 2025. 

It is mandatory to submit an outline. Applications for the main call that are not based on one or more of the submitted outlines will be rejected. We recommend that you familiarise yourself with the background for the call before submitting an outline. Read more about our commitment to artificial intelligence (in Norwegian).

The main call for proposals has been published as a notification of a call for proposals with limited information. More details about frameworks, conditions, guidelines, requirements and templates will come later. We plan to publish the full text of the main call before summer 2024.   

What happens to the outline? 

We will publish the title, name of Project Owner, contact person, actors and summary of each outline. This will give applicants and stakeholders an overview of submitted outlines, who is behind it and, if relevant, who to contact for possible collaboration. The Research Council will also initiate various meeting places (digital and physical) that will give the actors the opportunity to discuss and collaborate on grant applications. 

All approved outlines will receive brief written feedback from the Research Council on the content of the outline. The feedback will be a general assessment of the outlined centre's potential for a competitive application. The feedback will not be a scientific assessment. If relevant, you may also receive a recommendation on cooperation or whether to consider applying to other schemes and funding instruments. 

AI research centres 

The AI research centres must collectively cover three tracks: 

• Societal consequences of AI and other digital technologies 
• Technology: Development of future digital technologies, with emphasis on artificial intelligence 
• Innovation: How to adopt AI and digital technologies 

The three tracks overlap and must be seen in context with each other. 

The AI research centres are to conduct high-quality research on AI. The research must address issues that require interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral R&D collaboration. By this we mean collaboration between several research organisations and disciplines and with companies, public entities and/or other relevant actors nationally and internationally. 

The AI research centres will have different professional centres of gravity and partner compositions. Each research centre is expected to cover at least two of the tracks. 

The AI research centres must individually and collectively leave clear and lasting footprints in the Norwegian research and innovation system in the form of new knowledge and technology, increased capacity in the R&D system, more interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral cooperation and utilisation of the knowledge that is brought forth through the research. The research centres are to make Norway even better able to meet the challenges and exploit the opportunities that artificial intelligence will give us in the future. 

Expectations for an AI research centre: 

• must have clear and unambiguous objectives; 
• must have ambitious AI research goals that advance the research front; 
• must handle specific problems with transfer value to multiple fields/domains/applications; 
• must have interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral cooperation, nationally and internationally: solid (leading) partners from several disciplines, research organisations, trade and industry and the public sector; 
• must have ambitious and concrete goals for recruitment, researcher training and competence development among partners and actors outside the centre; 
• must have ambitious plans for dialogue, dissemination and dissemination of knowledge to society and relevant actors; 
• must have plans and goals for additional financing, in the form of own financing, partner financing or other financing sources. 

More detailed priorities and guidelines will be set out in the main call for proposals. 

This call is available in both Norwegian and English. The Norwegian call text is legally binding.