Pre-qualification to Submit an Application for a "Chips Competence Centre" on Semiconductor Technology and Smart Systems

Approved Norwegian research organisations, companies and the public sector are eligible to apply. See the list of approved research organisations and definition of the public sector.  

Requirements relating to the Project Owner 

The research organisation/public agency/enterprise 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 

There are no formal requirements for the project manager's qualifications. 

The Project Manager must be employed by the Project Owner or by one of the partners. 

Requirements relating to partners 

Approved Norwegian research organisations, the business sector and the public sector may participate as partners in the project and receive funding under the main project. The Project Owner and any partners may purchase goods or services from subcontractors. 

This is a pre-qualification call to apply for an international main call. This call therefore does not include funding. 

The conditions for the allocation of funding mentioned below will apply to the project that is awarded through Chips JU's call, and are set up here for information if your project should receive the recommendation to apply to Chips JU. 

The Norwegian centre will receive a total of EUR 4 million in funding from Chips JU and an equal amount from the Research Council of Norway. The funding is distributed over 4 years. 

Prerequisites for the award of funding 

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. Aid to "undertakings" constitutes state aid. In this context, an undertaking means any actor that engages in economic activity by offering goods and/or services in a market. When an undertaking is to have part of its project costs covered, either as a Project Owner or as a partner in the project, this must be done in accordance with Article 25 of the General Block Exemption Regulation (Commission Regulation (EU) No 651/2014). Read more about state aid.  

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

• 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 consists of.  
• 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.  

Please note that you can only submit the application once. If you submit the application before the deadline and subsequently see that it still needs to be changed, you can create a new application – e.g. as a copy of the one you have already submitted – and in this way submit a new version before the deadline expires. The deadline for submitting applications for this call is 21 June 2024 at 13:00. 

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

Mandatory attachments 

• Project description of maximum 20 pages. There is no template for a project description, but see information about the project description under "About the call". 
• Short CV for project manager/coordinator for the centre (maximum 1 page) 

Applications that do not meet the requirements above will be rejected. 

Optional attachments 

• CVs for key participants in the project 

All attachments to the application must be submitted with the application. We do not accept attachments submitted after the application deadline unless we have requested additional documentation. 

We will not consider documents and websites linked to in the application, or attachments other than those specified above. Be careful to upload the correct attachment type, as there are no technical restrictions on what kind of templates it is possible to upload in the application form. 

Applications will be assessed administratively by the Research Council's case officers, a recommendation for submitting applications to the main international call for proposals for Chips JU, with a deadline of September 2024. Applications for the national prequalification will be assessed on the basis of the following points (which you will find in more detail in Appendix 4): 

• "Expected outcomes" 
• "Scope" 
• "Access to the Chips Competence Centre" 
• "Consortia for Competence Centres" 

We expect to publish which applications are recommended for submission to Chips JU's call by 1 July 2024.