Astronomy Resources for Industry Applications
(ARIA) Program

A: Projects in any industry (excluding astronomy) are eligible to apply for ARIA Project funding to cover HPC expenses, as long as all other eligibility criteria are met (see ARIA Program Guidelines).

A: No prior experience is required, as long as the proposed project includes commissioning and/or acquiring access to HPC resources.

If you require support with onboarding/configuring a new environment or optimising software for HPC resources, please let us know in the application and AusSRC may be able to support with additional guidance or advice.

A: Please review the Eligibility Criteria found in the ARIA Program Guidelines, but typically if your organisation/project qualifies for access to a publicly funded supercomputing research facility, then you would not be eligible for this program. The ARIA project is aimed at enabling organisations to experiment and unlock innovations in HPC environments, who would otherwise face challenges in gaining access to such infrastructure.

A: AusSRC is an un-incorporated joint venture between CSIRO – Australia’s national science agency, Curtin University, the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre and the University of Western Australia (UWA). AusSRC received grant funding from the Australian Government.

The agreement is with UWA, as Head Agent of the AusSRC.

A: We aim to notify all applicants of the outcomes in June 2026. Successful applicants will be published on the AusSRC website (with permission).

A: Funds will be made by payment of invoice and paid as milestone payments (including an upfront payment, a mid-term payment, and a final payment towards the end of the term). We will aim to align the timing of the payment milestones to when applicants need to make payments to their HPC providers. Please indicate any preferred milestone payment dates (in line with the three-payment schedule described above) in your application form.

A: All IP generated by the Recipients remains with the Recipients. Please see details in the Guidelines.

Note: AusSRC is open to discussions around any potential applications of the innovations into the AusSRC’s work on the SKA project, but this would be subject to future negotiations and separate licencing and usage agreements, where applicable.

A: In the event of any unforeseen circumstances that impact the delivery plan in the initial application, please follow the process outlined in the Guidelines document to notify us as soon as possible and apply for an extension or variation.

A: Non-Cloud HPC access refers to the expense of gaining access to HPC resources outside of on-demand cloud services (e.g. applying for time on shared supercomputing facilities or fees for national or regional HPC centres). These expenses are deemed supported budget items and are eligible for funding.

Non-HPC cloud services refers to additional cloud platform fees, outside of HPC computing costs. This could be for account management services, security, monitoring and logging tools, and advanced identity and access management tools. These are considered non-supported items and are not eligible for funding, unless they are directly necessary to support the HPC workloads.

A: The wording you provide in the “External Project Description” section of the application form is what AusSRC will use when referring to your project in communication with stakeholders and for reporting purposes. Please ensure this description is suitable for external use and does not contain sensitive information.

A: AusSRC will follow UWA information management policy and procedures to secure the information collected and ensure it is used only for the intended purpose of executing the program. Learn more about Information Privacy at UWA.

If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to [email protected].