Call for Proposals: Ensemble Grants for Early Career Researchers 2021
Ryuta Kawashima
Professor
Chairperson of Tohoku University Research Institutes’ Director Meeting
Director of Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer, Tohoku University
Hiroyuki Kai
Assistant Professor
Leader of Tohoku University Research Institutes' Ensemble Project Working Group
Advanced Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University

The Ensemble Project for Early Career Researchers in Tohoku University will fund joint research groups
consisting of researchers from several departments in order to promote collaboration among early career
researchers in Tohoku University. The grants are intended to support budding academic research projects thatare created through interdepartmental collaboration based on free individual ideas.
Proposals are invited to encourage new research start-ups or attempts at new developments that broaden thescope of existing research. Early career researchers are welcome to apply, but those who participate in theresearch group as co-investigators are not required to have any status, as long as they meet the requirements
for affiliation described in the guidelines. We welcome applications based on new ideas and perspectives (notonly the content of research, but also the use of facilities in other departments to improve research efficiency).

Application guidelines
1.

Period of research

From June 1, 2021 (scheduled) to March 31, 2022.

2.

What is funded

We will provide research funds up to 500,000 yen for about fifteen projects. After a certain period of time,
the grants will be distributed to the departments of the Alliance of Research Institutes and Centers, Tohoku
University, to which the principal investigator belongs from the Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer,
which is the department in charge of this year.

3.

Eligible research projects

Collaborative research between multiple departments. The grants are open to research in all fields.
Interdisciplinary research is not a prerequisite.

4.

Eligible applicantsApplicants (principal investigators) should be postdocs, research assistants, assistant professors, lecturers,
and associate professors (including special appointments) who belong to each department of the Alliance of
Research Institutes and Centers, Tohoku University. We especially welcome applications from early career
researchers. Co-investigators other than the principal investigator are not subject to any restrictions on job
title or status, but they are not eligible if it is clear that the group in more than one department will no longer
be included in the majority of the research period due to graduation or completion of the course.
l Herein, the “Alliance of Research Institutes and Centers” refers to Institute for Materials Research (IMR),
Institute of Development, Aging, and Cancer (IDAC), Institute of Fluid Science (IFS), Research Instituteof Electrical Communication (RIEC), Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials(IMRAM), International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS), Center for Northeast AsianStudies (CNEAS), Frontier Research for Interdisciplinary Sciences (FRIS), Advanced Institute forMaterials Research (AIMR), Research Center for Electron Photon Science (ELPH), and New Industry
Creation Hatchery Center (NICHe), International Center for Synchrotron Radiation Innovation Smart(hereinafter the same).
l In the case of concurrently serving or concurrently serving (including the mentoring system of theInterdisciplinary Research Institute), it is not considered to be more than one department by itself, even
if you are a member of a group with researchers belonging to a department of the Alliance of ResearchInstitutes and Centers, Tohoku University, which is your main activity base.
l The applicant (principal investigator) must be able to use the university's budget management system at
one of the above departments.
l Only one application per person (including the principal investigator and co-investigator) is allowed.
l If it is difficult to determine whether the composition of the members of the applicant'srepresentative/associate is eligible for the application, please check with the Young Ensemble ProjectWorking Group (WG) well in advance of the deadline.

5.

Selection process

In order to discover budding research and support various researches, we will screen the content of researches
as a working group, and about 15 research projects will be randomly selected. After the random selection,
the decision will be officially approved by the Tohoku University Research Institutes’ Director Meeting.
Applications that fall under any of the following categories will not be accepted for screening.
l Applications that do not meet the eligibility and requirement in this guidelineØe.g., the member composition does not correspond to multiple departments. If the applicant isunable to make a clear judgment by himself/herself, please check with the WG well in advance ofthe deadline.

Øe.g., the applicant is not a postdoctoral researcher, assistant professor, assistant professor, lecturer,or associate professor (including specially-appointed/specified professor) belonging to one of thedepartments of the Alliance of Research Institutes and Centers.

Øe.g., the application is more than two pages long.

l Applications that are identical or very similar to previously awarded proposals
ØIf you are applying for a research proposal that may be judged to be similar to your own previously
accepted research, please indicate the differences from your previous proposal in the "Differencesfrom previously accepted proposals" section of the application form.

l Applications that do not show the minimum research content.
l Applications without justification in the necessary expense breakdown

6.

Continuation of research in the next fiscal year
We will conduct a peer review at a symposium to be held around January 2022 by allparticipants and invited faculty members, and select two or three proposals for continuation in
the next fiscal year (April 2022-March 2023, with a maximum research grant of 1,000,000 yen)in April 2022. In the next fiscal year, we plan to award about 15 new proposals (planned research
period: June 2022 to March 2023, with a maximum research grant of 500,000 yen) in addition
to these continuation proposals. The same proposal can be continued for up to one year (one yearof new proposal plus one year of continuation).

Figure 1. Selection process and periods of research
7.

Application form and submission

Please prepare the application form using the distributed application form, convert it to PDF, and the prepared
application should be submitted by the principal investigator using the web form below by the deadline.
https://forms.gle/5Q5M8axSALHGEvqR8
Deadline: Friday, June 4, 2021
Submissions in a different format or overdue will not be accepted.

8.

Reporting

At the end of the research period, the grant awardees are required to submit a report of their research resultsin the prescribed format (the contents of the report are available on the website of the Ensemble Project forinternal use only). They are also invited to present their research ideas and results at a symposium to be held
during this fiscal year. When you publish your results, please indicate that they were supported by thisprogram.

9.

Management

You are expected to conduct your research in accordance with all the rules and instructions of the university
and your department regarding safety and health management, network management, prevention of researchfraud, and legal compliance. Please note that we will discontinue the support if it is judged that you havedeviated from the above.

10. Notes
In the event of discrepancy between the English version and the Japanese version of the application guidelines,
the Japanese version shall prevail.
If you have any questions about the application guidelines, please contact us at:
l Tohoku University Research Institutes' Ensemble Project Working Group
ensemble_secretariat@fris.tohoku.ac.jp
l Dr. Hiroyuki Kai, Assistant Professor, Advanced Institute for Materials Research
kai@tohoku.ac.jp

How to prepare the application
The application form should be one or two pages.
1.

Research groupl The research group should be composed of faculty, researchers, and technical staff members belonging tomultiple departments of Tohoku University (research institutes, centers, graduate schools, etc.). In
addition to the above, external members may be included as co-investigators. Please add ◎ in front of theprincipal investigator's name.
l If the department to which you belong and the department in which you are mainly active are different(e.g., if you hold concurrent positions in multiple departments), please list both the department to which
you belong and the department in which you are mainly active.
2.

Research expenses breakdownl Research expenses are limited to equipment, supplies, travel expenses, honoraria, and personnel expenses
necessary to carry out this research. (Expenditures that are considered appropriate for running a laboratory
or for other research projects are not allowed.
3.

Plan of researchl If you are applying for a research proposal that may be judged to be similar to your own previously
accepted research, please indicate the differences from your previous proposal in the "Differences frompreviously accepted proposals" section of the application form.
l Please describe the plan for one year, not assuming continuation.
4.

Other research grant applicationsl This grant does not restrict duplicate applications with other research funds, but if there are restrictions
on other research funds, please apply with consideration.

Procedures for random selection of proposals
1

All applications will be assigned entry numbers 1, 2, 3, ..., N, starting from 1 and increasing by 1, in
the order in which the applications are received.
l The entry number will be assigned at the time the application is first submitted, even if theapplication is resubmitted within the period or withdrawn after submission.
l The entry number will be notified to the applicant at the time of acceptance or closing of the call.

2

Screening of applications will be done by the WG based on the application guidelines. The WG
determines M, the number of proposals to be adopted (M ~15). If the number of proposals that pass thescreening does not significantly exceed 15, all proposals may be accepted after adjusting the amount.
The screening and the decision on the number of proposals to be adopted will be made by June 10,2021.

3

The entry numbers of the applications that passed the screening will be randomly ranked using theattached Python script (Python 3.7), and the top M applications will be accepted.
3.1

Let the sum of the block hashes of the first five blocks in the Bitcoin blockchain after 8:00 a.m.
(Japan time) on June 11, 2021, be the random seed S. Initialize the random number withrandom.seed(S).

3.2

Prepare a list ENTRIES with the entry numbers in ascending order.

3.3

Shuffle the order of the presentation numbers ENTRIES by number_order =random.sample(ENTRIES, len(ENTRIES)).

3.4
4

In the order of number_order, M proposals will be accepted.

The list of entry numbers that have passed the screening in 2 and the random number seed used in 3.1
will be made public when the approved proposals are decided and notified.

Notes1

A new Bitcoin block is created approximately every 10 minutes. Each time a block is created, theblock height is increased by one, and the block-specific hash value (a 32-byte number) is determined.
The block hash value is suitable as a random seed for random selection because it has the following
propertiesl It is very difficult to know the block hash to be generated in the future and to set it to the desiredvalue (virtually impossible due to the cost of tens of millions of yen).
→ It is (virtually) impossible to predict or manipulate the results of random selection before
the deadline.
l Once the block hash is determined, its value can be obtained by anyone.
→ Anyone can verify later that the random selection process is not fraudulent or erroneousby using a random seed calculated from the block hash value.

2The attached Python script shows an example of using "the sum of five block hashes of bitcoin blockheight 629530-629534" as a random seed.
l The block hash value can be obtained from https://explorer.btc.com/btc/block/[block height] (e.g.,for block height 629530, see https://explorer.btc.com/btc/block/ 629530).
l When you run the Python script, you will get the following results. As long as the random number
seed is the same, the same result is obtained no matter how many times the script is run.
Entries: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17,18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 25, 28, 29, 31, 33] (26 in total)
Random seed:3328922384685780924223003444097241387041554684534517140

ResultSelected entries: [1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 16, 17, 18, 21, 23,25]

Python script for random selection
https://ideone.com/IrZVK5
import random
import platform
assert platform.python_version()[0:3] == "3.7", "Python version 3.7 must be used."# The number of selections
NUM_SELECTED = 15
# Entry numbers that passed the screening process (example is shown)
ENTRIES = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23,25, 28, 29, 31, 33]
assert NUM_SELECTED < len(ENTRIES), "Selection must happen"# Block hashes from certain block heights that were previously announced:# Below is the example by block heights 629530-629534.
hashes = [0x00000000000000000006F349AA480F67A2B603496DA07FD0F566680293B2D3E4,0x0000000000000000000E4BF1CA971D88B29D31B84751AE6BDF8F2F5F25E5D99E,0x00000000000000000003A91B8D6D37940269AE8DE9219176DCD6BA448CE0AC75,0x0000000000000000000137A2AC232E19D2163A4A28B2F1F49CCD35052579451E,0x00000000000000000008A17371C0F62112227C28B83DD88C5218CAD648484E7F,]
seed = sum(hashes)
random.seed(seed)print("Entries:", ENTRIES, "(%d in total)" % len(ENTRIES))
print("Random seed: %d" % seed)print()number_order = sorted(random.sample(ENTRIES, len(ENTRIES))[0:NUM_SELECTED])
print("Result")
print("Selected entries:", number_order)