Ontario institutions and research project teams are encouraged to submit proposals for the second phase of CANARIE's unique Network-Enabled Platforms (NEP) funding program.

The program, offered by Canada's advanced network organization, supports collaborative projects that will accelerate the development of, and participation in, national and international cyber-infrastructure and e-research platforms.

The program, open to projects from both the public and private sectors, must make use of the CANARIE network and be performed in Canada.

Four Ontario institutions and their partners were among 10 projects that received funding from the first phase of the CANARIE program.

They include Science Studio (a collaboration between the University of Western Ontario, Canadian Light Source Inc. and Concordia University); the Health Services Virtual Organizations project (a collaboration between Lakehead University with Northern Ontario School of Medicine, McGill University, and iDEAL Consulting); Canadian Brain Imagining Research Network - CBRAIN (a collaboration between McGill University, Rotman Research Institute, University of Western Ontario, and Universite de Montreal); and the ONE-ITS project (a collaboration between the University of Regina and the University of Toronto).

These projects are currently developing tools that support sharing complex data sets, facilitating the use of remote equipment, and enhancing the capabilities of collaborative research teams.

The primary focus of the second phase of the program is on the tools, architectures, standards and interfaces that are an integral part of a research platform. NEP2 would also support the formation of the distributed community of users coming together to build the platform, including the architecture that enables their collaboration.

"Network-enabled platform" describes an environment built around the following elements: the research network; a range of research infrastructure at the edge of the network; and the services and tools that make these resources useable by a distributed community of collaborators.

Applicants must declare their intention to submit a proposal by March 25. The submission deadline is May 4.

Learn more at www.canarie.ca.