2020 CCF-Tencent Rhino-Bird Young Faculty Open Research Fund

Jointly Launched by Tencent and the China Computer Federation (CCF) in 2013, the CCF-Tencent Rhino-Bird Young Faculty Open Research Fund is committed to building a platform for industry- university research cooperation and academic exchanges for young scholars around the world. For eight years, the Fund has provided the world's most innovative young scholars with access to real industry problems and actual business need. By connecting young scholars and corporate RD teams in the industry-university-research process, it aims o promote the academic influence of both sides as well as the application of research results and maintain energy for independent technological exploration and innovation.

In 2020, the Rhino-Bird Fund will focus on artificial intelligence (AI) technology and its technical connection with areas that are important to the national economy and the people’s livelihood such as materials and energy sciences, information security and health care. The Fund supports collaboration on frontier corporate issues, including multi-source information fusion, game theory and cryptography. The Fund also plans to conduct 35 school-enterprise research projects in 8 technical fields to further facilitate the collaboration on cutting-edge research between both sides.

Also, the Rhino-Bird Fund has established supportive projects to facilitate scientific research cooperation and the personal development of scholars. These projects include the brand new established "Rhino-Bird Scholar Reward Program" which aims to encourage the personal growth of young scholars and to support collaboration on innovative research projects. The on-going "Creativity Fund" and "Technical Standardization Research" are important supplements to the Rhino-Bird "Scientific Research Fund". Thanks to the "Rhino-Bird Visiting Scholar Program", the cooperation between young scholars and corporate R&D teams in cutting-edge technologies has been strengthened. Our project team also offers two high-quality academic tool and framework, i.e., Tencent’s TexSmart service and a pre-trained model on large-scale molecular graphs (GROVER) to scholars (see Appendix III for details).

Please visit program website Wiz(https://withzz.com/) to start your application for the 2020 CCF-Tencent Rhino-Bird Young Faculty Open Research Fund. For more information, please follow the official websites of CCF (https://www.ccf.org.cn/), Tencent University Relations(http://ur.tencent.com/), the official WeChat account of the CCF (ccfvoice), and Tencent University Relation (Tencent_UR).

2020 CCF-Tencent Rhino-Bird Young Faculty Open Research Fund Application Guide

I. General Guidelines

The CCF-Tencent Rhino-Bird Young Faculty Open Research Fund is jointly initiated by Tencent and the China Computer Federation (CCF). It aims to build a collaboration platform between industry and academia, connect industry practice with academic research, and help outstanding young scholars around the world to conduct cutting-edge scientific research by collaborating with enterprises.

The 2020 CCF-Tencent Rhino-Bird Young Faculty Open Research Fund issued a total of 35 research subjects mainly in 8 technical fields. See Appendix I Research Directions of 2020 CCF-Tencent Rhino-Bird Young Faculty Open Research Fund for more information.

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II. Fund Application

1. Application qualification

This fund is open for young scholars from universities and research institutes around the world who meet the following conditions:

• The applicant works as full-time academic staff at a university or research institute and was born on or after January 1, 1984 (for males) or January 1, 1979 (for females);

• The applicant has worked in a university or research institute for less than 5 years (for males) or 10 years (for females) after graduating from a master’s/doctoral program;
• The applicant can independently conduct research and lead students in research projects;

2. How to apply

Your application must be finished and submitted online before 24:00, June 15, 2020(Beijing time). Applicants need to fill out and upload their Application Form (see Appendix II). Please visit our official program website, i.e., https://withzz.com/project/detail/74 to start your application. Each applicant can submit one application only. Applicants who have been funded last year are not eligible but can apply for the next year’s fund. Before applying, you should confirm that universities/research institutes you work in can sign project cooperation agreement with Tencent. You should also confirm that they can sign the project confidentiality agreement and other relevant commitments.

For any questions in this regard, please contact Xinchen Di(email: xinchendi@tencent.com).

III. Milestones

IV. Project Evaluation

CCF and Tencent will jointly invite academia and industry experts to serve as project judges and form the project expert group. The final funding result for each research area and total amount will be determined by the project expert group. The evaluation of the experts is mainly based on the following criteria:

1. The purpose, significance, novelty, and feasibility of the project;

2. The applicant's execution plan as well as the significance and value of the achievement;

3. The academic level and scientific research ability of the applicant (and team).

V. Scientific research fund:

In 2020, the CCF-Tencent Rhino-Bird Young Faculty Open Research Fund set up a total of 35 research subjects. Each applicant can submit one application only. The amount of funding for each project is 150,000-200,000 RMB.

Appendix

2020 CCF-Tencent Rhino-Bird Young Faculty Open Research Fund

Appendix l: Research Directions

Attachment Il: Application Form for 2020 CCF-Tencent Rhino-Bird Young Faculty Open Research Fund

Appendix Ⅲ: Recommended Resources