Centre for Artificial Intelligence in Transport

Only approved Norwegian research organisations are eligible to apply. See the list of approved research organisations.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner 

The research organisation listed as the Project Owner in the application form must have approved the submission of the application. 

If the application is a collaboration between several organisations, the Project Owner must submit the application on behalf of all partners. 

Requirements relating to the project manager 

• The project manager (centre manager) must document relevant experience from managing large and complex projects with many partners. 
• The project manager must be employed by the Project Owner or by one of the partners. 

Requirements relating to partners 

Approved Norwegian research organisations and similar foreign organisations may participate as collaborating partners in the project and receive funding. 

• The centre must have two or more partners that are Norwegian research organisations. The centre may also have binding collaboration with foreign research communities. 
• The centre must have three or more Norwegian collaborating partners that are not research organisations. These are referred to as user partners. 
• All user partners must participate actively in research and must have a significant ability to utilise research results in the development of their activities. 
• The centre may have international user partners. You must describe how any international user partners will contribute to achieving the centre's goals. Foreign actors must be assessed against the Export Control Regulations. 

You can apply for funding to cover the actual costs necessary to carry out the project. The Project Owner must obtain information on costs from the collaborating partners in the project. These costs must be entered in the cost plan under the cost type to which they belong.  We require that you break down the project budget into the following cost types in your application: 

• Payroll and indirect expenses, which are costs incurred by the Project Owner and collaborating partners in the public sector or research organisations.  
• Other operating expenses, which are costs for other activities necessary to carry out the project's R&D activities. Any purchases from subcontractors must be entered here. All costs entered as "other operating expenses" must be specified in the application.  
• Equipment, which includes operating and depreciation costs for scientific equipment necessary to carry out the project.  

The item Procurement of R&D services is not to be used.  

If doctoral and postdoctoral research fellows are included in the project and there are specific plans for them to stay abroad, this may be included in the application. 

You will find detailed and important information about what to enter in the project budget on the website.   

Scope of support 

User partners that are public actors can receive funding. When the user partner is from the municipal sector, the maximum support from the Research Council is limited to 75% of the total approved project costs. For user partners from government agencies, the maximum support is limited to 50% of the total approved project costs. Private companies and public enterprises that carry out activities of an industrial or commercial nature can participate in the project, but cannot receive funding from us. 

The Research Council may provide funding to cover the costs of foreign research organisations (see Calculating payroll and indirect expenses for the university and university college sector). We cannot cover costs with other foreign partners. These costs must therefore be kept out of the budget tables. However, you must mention the activities they will carry out, as well as their costs, in the project description (see section 3.2).  

Ethics 

The Research Council requires a high standard of research ethics in the projects we fund, and ethics is included in the assessment criterion Excellence. The description of ethics is first and foremost an assurance to the panel that there is a plan in place to deal with the most important ethical dilemmas in the project. If you need to describe this in more detail, this can be done elsewhere in the project description, for example under method selection, or you can do so in the data management plan(s) (see below). 

The responsibility for compliance with the research ethics standard lies with the individual researcher and research organisation (cf.  The Act on the Organisation of Research Ethics). 

The panel's assessment and the Research Council's decision on the award do not entail any approval of research ethics. 

Conditions for funding 

We do not award state aid under this call. We assume that the research is carried out in effective collaboration as defined in the state aid rules: 

"Collaboration between at least two independent parties to exchange knowledge or technology, or to achieve a common objective based on the division of labour where the parties jointly define the scope of the collaborative project, contribute to its implementation and share its risks, as well as its results. One or several parties may bear the full costs of the project and thus relieve other parties of its financial risks. Contract research and provision of research services are not considered forms of collaboration." 

The following guidelines apply: 

• Support for a research organisation goes to the organisation's non-economic activity. It therefore does not constitute state aid. The Research Council assumes that the necessary accounting separation is in place. 
• User partners who do not have their costs covered or only part of their costs must contribute with their own financing.  The Project Owner, organisation and other research organisations may also provide their own funding, but this is not a requirement. 
• Rights to project results must be regulated so that companies participating in the centre do not receive indirect funding from participating research partners. The regulation of the rights must therefore be in line with the ESA's guidelines on aid for research, development and innovation, point 29. This means that rights to IPR from the project must be allocated to the various partners in a way that fully reflects their work packages, contributions and respective interests. 

The Research Council's prerequisites for awards can also be found in our general terms and conditions for R&D projects on the information page What the contract involves.  

In addition, you must be aware of the following if you should receive an award from us: 

• The project manager and the Project Owner must have assessed and managed the consideration of research security in the project.  
• The Project Owner must establish a collaboration agreement(s) with all collaborating partners in the centre. The collaboration agreement is intended to regulate mutual rights and obligations and ensure the integrity and independence of research. The collaboration agreement must also ensure that no collaborating undertaking receives indirect funding from the research organisation that is the Project Owner or from the collaborating research organisation. The cooperation agreement must therefore contain conditions that ensure that ESA's guidelines on state aid for R&D&I, section 29, are complied with.  
• The Research Council requires full and immediate open access for scientific articles, see Plan S - open access to publications.  
• For all projects that handle data, the Project Owner must prepare a data management plan in connection with the revised application, where you will find more information about the requirements for data management plans in projects that receive funding from us.  
• Grant recipients in research organisations and the public sector (Project Owners and collaborating partners) must have action plans for gender equality (GEPs) available on their websites. The requirement does not apply to the private sector, interest groups or the voluntary sector.    
• The Project Owner organisation decides which archiving solution(s) will be used for storing research data that emerges from the project. This must be specified in the project's data management plan. 
• For medical and health studies involving humans, the Research Council sets special requirements and guidelines for prospective registration of studies and publication of results. 

You can change and submit the application several times until the application deadline. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have completed the application form and uploaded the mandatory attachments. When the application deadline expires, it is the version of the application that was submitted most recently that we process. 

• The application and all attachments must be written in English. 
• All attachments must be in PDF format. 

Mandatory attachments 

• Project description of a maximum of 20 pages. Use the standard template that you can download at the bottom of the page. 
• CV for project manager. Use the standard template that you will find at the end of the call. 
• CVs for up to ten of the most important people (e.g. work package leaders) in the project. Use the standard template that you can download at the bottom of the page. 
• Letters of intent from all the collaborating partners. See sample letter of intent on our guidance page.  
• Description of relevance of a maximum of one page. The template can be found at the bottom of the call. When describing the relevance of the application, we recommend that you read the call text carefully. Uploaded as attachment type "Other". Applications that do not meet the requirements above will be rejected. 

Optional attachments 

• Feel free to attach an attachment with suggestions for up to three peer reviewers/professionals (possibly academic communities) who you believe have the competence to assess the application, or a brief description of the competence that you believe will be suitable to assess it. We are under no obligation to use these suggestions. 

All requirements in the call must be met. Applications that do not meet the design requirements or requirements relating to the Project Owner and requirements relating to collaboration and roles in the project will be rejected. 

We will not consider attachments other than those specified above, or documents and websites linked to in the application. 

All attachments to the application must be submitted with the application. We do not accept attachments submitted after the application deadline unless we have asked for additional documentation. Please make sure to upload the correct attachment type, as there are no technical restrictions on the types of templates that can be uploaded in the application form. 

Applications will be assessed in light of the purpose of the call and the following criteria:

Once we have received the applications after the application deadline, we will first check that the formal requirements for the design of the application have been met. Applications that do not meet these requirements will be rejected. 

The Research Council of Norway may reject applications where the Project Owner or any partner has significantly breached its obligations in other projects funded by the Research Council within the two years prior to the submission of the application. 

The application may be rejected if the project manager has been convicted of misconduct by the Joint Integrity Committee or the Investigation Committee in the last two years prior to the submitted application. 

In addition, applications that do not satisfy the thematic priorities set out in the call will be rejected. Decisions on this are made by the portfolio board for Energy and Transport. 

Applications that meet the formal requirements will be assessed by a panel of referees who arrive at a consensus assessment of each of the three criteria: "Research quality", "Impacts and impacts" and "Implementation". 

The Research Council's case officers will assess the application on the basis of the criterion "Relevance to the call". The results of the assessment of the four criteria mentioned above are summarised in an overall mark as an overall expression of the quality of the application. 

The portfolio board for Energy and Transport also bases its decision on the award on an overall assessment. In their assessment, they take into account: 

• the marks awarded in the assessment of the applications, and in particular the assessment of the criterion "Impacts and effects" 
• The purpose of the centre 
• the relevance of the planned research activities to the transport policy objectives set out in the National Transport Plan 

In addition, the portfolio board will prioritise projects that have a place on the road to a low-emission society, and in cases where two projects have received otherwise equal assessments, priority will be given to the project that is most sustainable in terms of effects on climate, the environment and society. 

The portfolio board plans to hold a decision meeting in September 2026. We will publish the results of the application processing after the meeting. 

See also: How we process applications.