Call for Research in the India Research Program

• Overview
• Research Needs
• White Paper Guidelines
• Proposal Guidelines
• Timetable and Deadlines

Overview

Semiconductor Research Corp. (SRC) Special Research Program (SRP) is soliciting white papers for our India Research Program (IRP). Only a very limited number of white papers will receive eventual funding.

This call, issued to universities in India, may be addressed by an individual investigator or a research team. Our selection process is divided into two stages. Interested parties are requested to submit a 1-page white paper, which should identify what can be done in a three-year period beginning September 1, 2019. A successfully selected white paper will result in an invitation to submit a full proposal. These proposals will be further down-selected for research contracts.

It is the intention of the members for selected projects to be reviewed and renewed annually, but we anticipate that a project will have a lifetime of 3 years to support the completion of a doctoral dissertation. SRC projects typically involve 1-2 graduate students. SRC expects to support each project up to $12K (USD) per year, with the expectation that faculty bring leverage from the Indian government (or possibly other sources) of at least $24K (USD) per year. Leverage funding may be added in the second year of the project but is a consideration as selections are made.

The number and size of the contracts awarded will be determined by the availability of funds, and by the number of high-quality proposals. Contracts awarded normally support 1-2 graduate students. The funding level requested will be a factor in the selection process. Proposals offering funding leverage (other funding resources related and beneficial to the proposed work) are encouraged and details should be described (ex. Fellowships, student support, fabrication support, etc.).

Each researcher may be involved in no more than two white papers.

Research Needs

In this solicitation we are particularity interested in addressing member needs in computer-aided design and test, system level design, analog/mixed signal circuit and systems, internet of things, cloud computing, machine learning, and information systems security. Specific topics highlighted in this call are:

• Design for robustness: tools, techniques, architectures, and systems
• Test techniques: yield learning, RF, mm-wave, high-speed, high-level, diagnosis, and repair, approximate test, big data analysis
• Design verification and validation techniques: core algorithms, formal approaches, model generation, analog/mixed-signal, mm-wave, post-silicon, system-level, and security
• Design optimization for functions including power management, energy harvesting, clocking, and RF baseband
• Compact circuit simulation models for analog/mixed-signal devices
• System level design optimization, including early exploration with SW/HW co-development for multi-core SoC designs, and energy efficiency
• Design for security of information systems, embedded systems and automotive systems, including accelerators and HW/SW co-design
• AI, cognitive, machine learning, and deep learning: architectures, techniques and applications for IoT edge devices to the cloud
• Cloud computing, analytics: enabling architectures, techniques, and applications
• Architectures, accelerators, reconfigurable computing, hardware-software co-optimizations for Cognitive Computing, Machine/Deep Learning, Computer Vision, FMCW Radar and LIDAR.
• Architectures for near-memory and in-memory Computing: using both traditional memories and emerging non-volatile memories
• Cache and memory hierarchies: for general-purpose and domain-specific systems
• Security and safety of analog signal chains
• Design for safety and safety mechanisms, and safety analysis techniques

White Paper Guidelines

White Papers are limited to 1 page total, using a minimum of 10-point font size, and must be submitted via the SRC web-site by Monday, April 22, 2019 no later than 3PM EDT/ Tuesday, April 23, 2019 12:30AM IST. Submissions not in compliance with all guidelines will be excluded from consideration.

Please include the following identifying information in your White Paper: 

• Project title
• Investigator(s) and university
• Principal investigator’s contact information (telephone number, mailing address, and e-mail address)

Please address the following topics in your White Paper:

• Targeted Need: Emphasize area and problem to be addressed; match most relevant topic addressed in the research needs document,
• Approach: Present your strategy for addressing the problem. Describe important findings from your research to date. Describe how your research would advance the state-of-the-art and be useful to SRC member companies.
• Objective and Results: What you plan to accomplish in a 3-year period. What are the anticipated outputs of a successful effort?
• Funding Request and participants: Plan for yearly budget should include overhead charges by your institution. Besides faculty, please also indicate the number of students supported and their degrees pursued. A detailed approved budget is not required at this time.
• Funding Leverage: Leverage funding applicable to the proposed research. Leverage includes other funding resources, subsidy, waived expenses and salaries, etc.
• Background IP: Identify any blocking pre-existing intellectual property on which new results will be based.

Proposal Guidelines

Invited proposals must be submitted via the SRC web-site by Monday, July 15, 2019 @ 11:59 PM ET/July 6, 2019 @ 9:29 AM IST.

Get started: The proposal submission process begins by going to https://www.src.org/app/proposal/submit/ and inputting the proposal ID that was sent to you via email. You will download the GRC proposal template package and complete the online proposal cover page.

Prepare your proposal: Use the proposal templates to prepare your proposal. Once the proposal parts have been prepared, they must be converted to PDF and combined in the following order:

• Overview of Research: This section is less structured and more narrative than the Research Catalog page. This is an opportunity for you to be creative (but not verbose) in characterizing the value of your proposed research—its technical merit, innovative approach and relevance to industry—and the strength of your research team. Remember this is an overview of your entire research, individual task descriptions should be described in the research catalog pages. The overview section should be no more than than five (5), not including references.
• Research Catalog Page: SRC requires that each funded research task is described in a common structure—for incorporation into the online Research Catalog. Some contracts have a single defined task; if you are proposing multiple tasks, include one catalog page per task. Note that there are strict word limits for each section of the Catalog page.
• Finance Plan: This spreadsheet includes three Excel worksheets. In some cases you will be duplicating the worksheets for multiple years or multiple participants.
• Annual Budget: Duplicate the budget worksheet so that you have one for each contract year. Each year’s budget must be signed by the PI and the appropriate university official.
• Other Support: List all other sources of funding support, current and pending. Complete a copy of this worksheet for each researcher.
• Monthly Expenditures: This is essentially your burn rate, and assists SRC in planning its cash flow and monitoring your progress.

Contract Awardees will be expected to:

• Assign a student to work on the project at the start of the contract
• Participate in annual project reviews (PIs and students).
• Participate in SRC's student conference, TECHCON (students).
• Interact with industry liaisons.
• Submit reports for pre-defined deliverables in proposal.
• Submit publications resulting from sponsored research.
• Submit drafts of publications before publication.
• File patents when applicable.

Timetable and Deadlines

Please direct all technical questions to David Yeh, IRP Director, (919)941-9464
All other questions and responses should be directed to LaTanya Holmes, (919)941-9431.