New Instruments for HALO – DFG Issues New Major Instrumentation Programme Call

Funding is offered for institutions of higher education in Germany who wish to implement novel scientific instrumentation on the High Altitude and Long Range Research Aircraft HALO.

The Major Instrumentation Initiative programme by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG – German Research Foundation) is a strategic funding tool which is designed to support the acquisition of costly major instrumentation and equipment with outstanding or novel technology for use in research.

DFG now launches a new Major Instrumentation Initiative for novel scientific instrumentation on the High Altitude and Long Range Research Aircraft HALO. HALO enables ground-breaking research in earth system science and allows for innovative atmospheric and geophysical measurements with a high-ceiling altitude of up to 15km and a range of about 10,000km. For satellite missions, it also provides unique possibilities to combine and validate space-borne data with measurements of the atmosphere that were performed in situ and near the ground.

This call is dedicated to expanding the scientific instrumentation of HALO with the aim to address an even wider range of parameters to be observed during the flight missions. The novel instrumentation should provide a substantial and lasting qualitative step forward in the instrumentation of HALO.

Major Instrumentation Initiatives are aimed exclusively at institutions of higher education in Germany. Applicants must demonstrate the necessary scientific and technical expertise for the successful operation of the equipment and outline the proposed research using it. However, funding for the actual scientific research which uses HALO equipment is not offered through this call.

Eligible to apply are publicly funded institutions of higher education (Hochschulen) and private universities with institutional accreditation in Germany.

Funding is provided for a period of up to five years to cover the costs of the acquisition of research equipment as well as related staff and material costs. This may include eg costs for assembling the components, validation and calibration work and for supporting users of the instrumentation. Costs for the certification process may also be included.

The applicant university is responsible to provide adequate support for the operation and maintenance of the HALO equipment.

The scheme comprises a multi-step application process. As a first step, interested institutions of higher education must submit a compulsory Letter of Intent. In the next step, applicants submit their proposals.

Letters of Intent must be received by the deadline of 10 January 2023.

(This report was the subject of a RESEARCHconnect Newsflash.)