Innovation Grant Call
The DTC Singapore Innovation Grant Call is a competitive research funding initiative that seeks to support collaboration between Singapore-based Institute of Higher Learning (IHLs)/Research Institutes (RIs) and companies with a presence in Singapore (“companies”) to co-develop Trust Tech solutions. The goal is to promote and facilitate innovation in Trust Tech, support digital transformation and translation into actual use cases. IHLs/RIs are required to collaborate with companies (“team”) to form multi-disciplinary teams and consortia of industry domain experts, engineers, researchers, scientists, academics and other professionals to be eligible for this grant.
Scope of Innovation Grant Call
The DTC Singapore Innovation Grant Call will partner IHLs/RIs with companies to focus on trust technologies. We are particularly interested in research that has great potential to:
- Generate innovations in trust technologies that can support digital transformation and can be translated into actual use cases,
- Address systemic real-world problems in the field that, once solved, can be scaled for other players in the sector or industry.
The proposed opportunities and focus areas shall include, but are not limited to, the following:
Trusted Analysis and Compute
The main focus will be related to sharing of sensitive data/model in artificial intelligence and machine learning. The emphasis will be on trust technologies enhanced computation without disclosing the actual raw data and/or analytic model:
- Privacy-preserving AI
- Privacy-preserving tech:
- Full Homomorphic Encryption (FHE)
- Searchable Symmetric Encryption (SSE) with analytics
- Data Synthesis (DS)
- Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMPC)
- Federated Learning (FL)
- Differential Privacy (DP)
Decentralisation and Web 3.0
The focus will be on verifiable credentials/documents and transferable records in a decentralised environment, track and trace in supply chain, digital identity and analytics on decentralised finance:
- Blockchain analytics (in particular, against financial crimes)
- Trusted decentralised digital identity
- Decentralised computing and storage systems
Trusted Accreditation
The focus will be on: (i) foundational AI model risks that impact on the entire AI ecosystem, (ii) services and platform available to perform foundational AI model risk assessments, and (iii) mechanisms to avoid AI risks (or at least reduce the impact of collective failure of AI ecosystem).
- Trustworthy AI
- Function as intended
- No unauthorised modifications
- Operated in a secure manner
- Responsible AI – Traditional AI risks of users and organisations.
- Fair, Transparent, Explainable
- Accountable, Ethically developed
- No misuse of data in favour of ML
- Safe AI - Frontier AI risks of societal harms and public safety.
- Harmful content, Value Alignment
- Disinformation, Hallucination
- Copyright, Data supply chain risk
Full details of the scope for the grant call can be found in the DTC Singapore Innovation Grant Call Rules and Guidelines
Evaluation Criteria
The proposed research, problem scope, technical approach, and potential impacts of the proposal shall be defined by the team. Moreover, proposals should clearly state the following:
- Alignment of the proposal to DTC Singapore’s objective and direction
- Concise problem statement for a well-defined real-life use case, where trust is a major concern and trust technology is critical to address the problem
- Potential benefit of a co-developed solution to enable digitalisation and digital transformation, and impact on the sector or industry when scaled for other players.
The timeline for this DTC Singapore Innovation Grant Call is shown below:
Event | Date |
---|---|
Opening date for submission (softcopy via email) | 17 June 2024 |
Submission deadline | 19 August 2024, 5:00 pm |
Evaluation and approval of proposals | Mid-August to Mid-October 2024 |
Approval process | Mid-November 2024 to Mid-February 2025 |
Project commencement | Mid-February 2025 onwards |
Funding Support and Duration
The funding quantum available to each selected team is up to S$1 million for a project duration of 12 months.
- The corresponding budget requested will only support IHLs/RIs and includes 30% Indirect Research Costs (IRC) for IHLs/RIs.
- Companies are required to provide in-kind contributions, e.g. manpower (mandatory), equipment, data, etc.
- Beyond the funding support for IHLs/RIs, companies are encouraged to provide cash co-funding. The amount of cash co-funding by companies will determine the ownership of intellectual property developed under the grant (refer to 10B. Intellectual Property of Grant Call Guidelines).
- Research Scholarships are not supported under the DTC Singapore Innovation Grant Call.
Project Support
Body of Knowledge:
An online portal that provides:
- 'Digital Directory' a user-friendly platform that:
- Builds a network and facilitates easy identification of experts with TrustTech capabilities for IHLs and RIs. Fosters interaction and enables connections between IHLs and the industry to explore potential collaboration on innovative projects.
Trust Tech Networking
- DTC Singapore will organise at least one event before the innovation grant call.
- This event will facilitate interaction between industry and local Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) to explore collaboration opportunities in preparation for the innovation grant call.
DTC Singapore Common Engineering Pool (subject to DTC Singapore’s assessment or availability)
- The types of capabilities in this pool of engineering resources include web services, network programming, software engineering, cloud computing, and privacy-preserving technologies.
- The availability of these resources is subject to factors such as resource allocation within DTC Singapore, current activities at DTC Singapore, and potential demand from other grant call proposals. Applicants interested in these resources should consult with DTC Singapore in advance.
DTC Singapore Sandbox (subject to DTC Singapore’s assessment or availability)
- Open to tech companies, end-user companies, and IHLs/RIs to test their applications and/or datasets and evaluate the potential of TrustTech.
- These virtual computational sandboxes provide a secure and high-performance computing environment for the awarded projects.
Guides and Documents
- Annex A-DTC Singapore Innovation Grant Call Proposal Template
- Annex B-Terms and Conditions of DTC Singapore Innovation Grant
- Annex C-Guidelines for the Management of DTC Singapore Innovation Grant
- Annex I - Project Costs Breakdown (DTC Singapore Innov Grant Call)
- DTC Singapore Innovation Grant Call Rules and GuidelinesDTC Singapore Innovation Grant Call Rules and GuidelinesDTC Singapore Innovation Grant Call Rules and Guidelines
- DTC Singapore Innovation Grant Call FAQ