Funding Opportunities

Digging into Data Challenge

SSHRC, the United States of America's National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and National Science Foundation (NSF), and the United Kingdom's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) are launching the Digging into Data Challenge, a new competition for humanities and social sciences research on cyberscholarship.

In recognition of the international nature of cyberinfrastructure/e-science, the purpose of the program is to bring together international research teams to advance research and to share their results openly, so that others may learn from them.

Specific objectives are:

• to promote the development and deployment of innovative research techniques in large-scale data analysis;
• to foster interdisciplinary collaboration among scholars in the humanities, social sciences, computer sciences, information sciences, and other fields, around questions of text and data analysis;
• to promote international collaboration; and
• to work with data repositories that hold large digital collections to ensure efficient access to these materials for research.

The complete Digging into Data Challenge - Request for Proposal is hosted on the Digging into Data Challenge website. Interested parties must apply through this site.

Amount of Funding

The maximum award is US$300,000. This amount includes contributions from all of the organizations involved.

Canadian applicants may apply for up to 75 per cent of the total project cost. The remaining 25 per cent must be provided by another co-funding organization of this competition (i.e., the NEH, NSF, JISC). The actual mix of funding, however, must be determined by the expenditures to be incurred by the various co-applicants.

Canadian participants in each project must prepare a budget detailing costs and the requested amount from SSHRC. The project teams are required to submit a universal budget, as well as a separate budget detailing the expenses to be incurred by the Canadian participants.

The complete list of eligible and ineligible expenses for Canadian participants can be found in the Tri-Agency Financial Administration Guide.

Administrative Regulations

All Canadian applicants and grant holders must comply with the regulations set out in SSHRC's Grant Holder's Guide.

Please note that this competition has unique deadlines that are not referred to in the Grant Holder's Guide. Please consult the main RFP for these details.

The deadline for the Letter of Intent stage is March 15, 2009.

Given the uniqueness of this competition, for more details, please visit the Digging into Data Challenge website or contact:

Mika Oehling
Program Officer
Strategic Programs and Joint Initiatives Division
SSHRC
350 Albert St.
P.O. Box 1610
Ottawa, Ontario K1P 6G4
Tel.: 613-992-4227