Lead: Iseult Lynch (University of Birmingham) / Deputy: Egon Willihagen (Maastricht University)

Participating Partners: UoB, EdC, CEH, NTUA, UCD, LEITAT, BfR, BNN, PLUS, NovaMechanics, Biomax, UM

Work Package 7 (WP7) will establish a helpdesk and associated support services for users of the NanoCommons infrastructure and expertise.

To facilitate Users in starting to use the infrastructure and to provide ongoing support to all data, tools and services integrated and developed within WPs2-6, WP7 provides supporting material and help functions including online tutorials for each of the different computational tools, as well as direct access to the experts through the help desk to support Users in developing their NanoCommons Service or Transnational Access proposals.

Experience from the QualityNano experimental infrastructure, and the NERC-developed Bioinformatics infrastructure shows that Users need guidance in developing their proposals in order to ensure they select the right modality of access and/or the appropriate computational tools to address their research question. Thus, the Helpdesk will act as central point to support Users in developing their applications, and will ensure timely responses from TA partners to User queries.

Objectives of the TA helpdesk are thus to:

• support Users in the development of their TA applications, guiding them to the most appropriate modality of access, the most suitable tool to address their research question, and the time needed to complete their proposed work.
• develop a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document to support the online application form and the full set of User guidance documentation to streamline the entire Transnational Access process.
• work closely with specific under-represented User groups, such as the new member states, industry and regulators, to support their uptake and utilisation of the NanoCommons starting community knowledge infrastructure, including development of pilot or demonstrator mini-projects.