23 October 2019, 5pm

https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/programmes/knowledge-frontiers-international-interdisciplinary-2020

• Awards of 24 months in duration and up to £200,000 are available.
• Funding can be used to support research expenses and consumables; travel and subsistence; networking, meeting and conference costs; and research and/or clerical assistance (postdoctoral or equivalent).
• Awards are offered on a 100% full economic costing basis.
• Projects must begin on 1 April 2020.

Eligibility requirements

• The lead applicant must be a researcher from the humanities or social sciences, and be based at an eligible UK university or research institute. S/he must be of postdoctoral or above status (or have equivalent research experience).
• Projects must involve at least one co-applicant from the natural, engineering and/or medical sciences. Collaboration between researchers in different institutions is encouraged, where appropriate, given the nature and aims of the programme, and applications may include co-applicants and other participants from overseas.

The British Academy is inviting proposals from UK-based researchers in the humanities and social sciences wishing to develop international interdisciplinary projects in collaboration with colleagues from the natural, engineering and/or medical sciences, with a focus on hazard and risk, cultures of forecasting, and the meaning of resilience.

The purpose of each project will be to develop new international research ideas. Projects will need to also demonstrate an innovative and interdisciplinary partnership (between researchers in the social sciences or the humanities on the one hand and counterparts in the natural, engineering and/or medical sciences on the other). The Academy is looking to fund applications that break new ground in the collaborations – international and interdisciplinary – they support and the research they aim to undertake. The Academy particularly encourages applications led by scholars in the humanities.

Projects must relate to one or more of the following themes:

• Hazard and Risk: Hazard and risk as concepts and lived experience are ripe for significant interdisciplinary and international collaboration, which the Academy hopes to encourage in applications. The direct impacts of hazard and risk, such as the economic and physical are well-known, however, they are often not linked with indirect impacts, such as mental health and people’s broader well-being. Applications that aim to re-imagine hazard and risk to help build preparedness and awareness and to create new co-produced knowledge collaborations and participatory approaches are particularly welcome. The Academy is keen to support the development of novel interactions, including with local communities, and/or new interfaces for the understanding and perception of hazard and risk that bring together different forms of lived experience, storytelling, evidence, data and models.
• Cultures of Forecasting: Uncertainty is not novel to our current time and neither is the desire and ability to forecast into the future. Understanding, however, of different cultures of forecasting in our current uncertain times needs further exploration. The Academy wishes to encourage applications that aim to bring together different communities of expertise – academic, professional, business, lay, community for example – to further understand the interactions between nature, culture and human endeavour that lead to contested futures in the present and further develop this contestation or could provide grounds for collaboration between, for example, faith, rituals, lived experience, modelling and data science.
• Meaning of Resilience: Resilience as a concept has gained considerable resonance in recent years but remains ambiguous in its meaning and thus lacking in utility. For too long, resilience has been thought of as a uniform social property, rather than as a collaboration between humans and non-humans, or as a situated cultural practice. The Academy wishes to harness new thinking on narrating human experience of resilience by exploring how meanings, values and cultural expressions shape societal interpretations of resilience as well as individual and community forms of preparedness to adversity in a variety of forms. The Academy aims to help improve understanding of how resilience is formed, or not, in different societies and how this is understood and embedded in culture, historical practice, and socio-technical infrastructures.

Previous awards can be seen here:

For 2018 https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/programmes/knowledge-frontiers-international-interdisciplinary-research-projects-2018

For 2017 https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/programmes/knowledge-frontiers-international-interdisciplinary-2017

The next submission round for Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Standard Grants, including New Investigator Awards, will be in January 2020 (http://www.nerc.ac.uk/funding/available/researchgrants/standard/).

As many of you will be aware, in February 2015, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) introduced ‘Demand Management’ measures to limit the number and size of applications submitted to its standard grants competitions: www.nerc.ac.uk/funding/available/researchgrants/demand/.  This resulted in NERC restricting the number of Newcastle University applications and the University subsequently implementing an internal selection process.

As of July 2019, NERC removed the cap on the number of applications Newcastle can submit for the July 2019 and January 2020 rounds. This is because Newcastle’s success rate over the previous six rounds had risen above 20%. Now the cap has been removed, we’d like to encourage more applications to NERC. To ensure that we maintain success rates above the 20% threshold the NERC Application Support Panel continue to be committed to supporting the University in ensuring that we have the highest quality NERC applications as possible.

The intention of the process is not to select a limited number of proposals from the pool of applications submitted to the internal NERC support panel. The focus will be on maintaining the quality of a larger number of applications to the NERC than was possible previously. The aim is to increase our research activity in areas of NERC science while ensuring we avoid being placed under demand management in the future.

If you would like to be considered for the January 2020 round, you will need to do the following:

1. Inform Holly Davidson (holly.davidson@ncl.ac.uk) of your intent to apply and provide the names of 3 Newcastle University members who could review your proposal by Monday 16^th September;
2. Submit your full NERC proposal by Tuesday 1^st October. This should be the JeS print-out of your full proposal, including all costs, JeS sections and attachments (case for support etc.).  This is so that our reviewers and panel can give you the best possible feedback. For support with the costing on your proposal, please engage with the SAgE Projects Team as soon as possible by completing the Project Initiation Form. A member of the Projects Team will then be in contact with you to help. If you are from the HaSS or FMS Faculties, please contact your local support for costing support.

Internal peer review will be carried out at the beginning of October. You will then be given the opportunity to respond to your reviewers’ comments towards the end of October. The Newcastle NERC Application Support Panel will then meet during the week commencing 11^th November.

You will be given feedback as soon as possible after the meeting. You will then have until the NERC deadline in January 2020 to refine your proposal. The timings of this support process have been set following feedback from previous applicants that they needed as much time as possible to refine their proposal in response to the reviewer and panel feedback.

Details of the Newcastle NERC Application Support Panel and how it works are given in the attached document.

Newcastle University NERC Application Support – January 2020 round

If you have any questions about the support process please contact Holly Davidson (holly.davidson@ncl.ac.uk).

Call status: Pre-announcement
Call open date: 2 September 2019 (subject to change)
Call closing date: 23 October 2019 (subject to change)

BBSRC 19ALERT: Mid-range equipment initiative
https://bbsrc.ukri.org/funding/filter/19alert-mid-range-equipment-initiative/
The scope of the call is currently being defined but proposals should consider equipment that will be used collaboratively by more than one organisation, whilst strengthening capability across multiple areas of the UKRI-BBSRC remit. Applicants are also encouraged to pioneer the use of emerging advanced research technologies and to utilise equipment in novel applications.

Value for money will be an important factor in assessment. Consequently, whilst contributions (both financial and in-kind) from the host institution(s) and/or other external sources are not mandatory, they are strongly encouraged. The call is open only to individuals and organisations normally eligible to apply to UKRI-BBSRC for research grants, see Section 3 of the BBSRC grants guide (PDF 976KB).

Further information will be provided as soon as it is available

The BBSRC Global Challenges Research Fund Strategic Training Awards for Research Skills (GCRF-STARS) programme aims to build a portfolio of sustainable and timely training resources to up-skill and develop researchers and graduate students, in research priority areas, in the UK and developing countries within the research skills required to help tackle global challenges.
BBSRC welcomes applications for support of any research capability within its remit, but applications must emphasise the specific global challenge of relevance to the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) that they will be working in, and in particular those challenges highlighted as targets that are priorities for developing countries:
• Secure and resilient food systems.
• Sustainable health and wellbeing.
• Affordable and sustainable energy.
• Sustainable livelihoods, economic growth through the circular bioeconomy.
• Resilience and environmental change.
• Sustainable production and consumption.
• Prevention of diseases in humans and farm animals relevant to the developing country.
• Prevention of crop disease in varieties grown in/developed for developing countries.
Applications outside these areas are welcome, but a strong, evidenced case for why the topic addresses global challenges skills is essential. Standard BBSRC eligibility rules apply, lead and co-applicants must be employed by an eligible higher education institution, research institute or independent research organisation (IRO).
A total of up to £500,000 is available to support the training activities through this programme in the period from 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021. Individual applications may seek BBSRC funding of up to £100,000 (in total, across the duration of the award). Funding is at 100% fEC.
GCRF-STARS awards are flexible and may be used to support strategic skills for a short, discrete period or for up to three years of recurrent funding. Applications should provide clear justification for the duration and size of awards proposed.

Applications must be made through the Je-S system by the deadline of 16 October 2019 (16:00).

2020 Sir Jules Thorn Award for Biomedical Research

https://julesthorntrust.org.uk/programmes/medical-research/the-sir-jules-thorn-award-for-biomedical-research/

The Trust offers one grant of up to £1.7 million to support a five-year programme of translational biomedical research.

UK medical schools and NHS organisations are able to submit one application annually, selected following an internal process.

Please ensure to read the guidance notes and terms and conditions documents available via the link above.

Internal selection process

Deadline: 5pm, Monday 2^nd September 2019

The Award enables successful applicants to pursue their own independent research programme.

The work must include research involving patients.

There must be a clear specification of the hypothesis based on pre-clinical experimental data supporting the rationale of the clinical study, arising from the applicant’s own work, (not derivative of someone else’s observations).

Further work to support the hypothesis in the early phase of the grant or, indeed, to substantiate questions arising from clinical experiments may be supported by experimental animal models.

There must be a clear strategy defining how the research will translate into benefit for patients and the timescale within which this will take place.

The research must have a justifiable claim to be at the leading edge of international science and must be led by a clearly identified Principal Applicant of outstanding quality in the early years of an established research and academic career.

The Award may not be used to meet the salary costs of the applicant(s) who should be in institutionally funded posts for the duration of the grant.

The studies might include for example:-.

• Significant proposals which could lead to improved diagnosis and/or prognostic methods and to new treatments.
• Concept validation.
• Intervention trials.

All proposals must be based on appropriate bio-statistical analysis

Requested documents

• 1 page project outline
• 2 page CV

Please could the requested application documents be sent, by the deadline, to Darren Airey (darren.airey@newcastle.ac.uk) and Gwen Averley (gwen.averley@newcastle.ac.uk).

Please note – The Trust’s charitable status does not permit the provision of a grant which might, whether directly or indirectly, contribute to a commercial profit for a manufacturer.

An application cannot, therefore, be considered where a manufacturer is supplying a cash grant or equipment, materials, drugs etc. at no cost, whether express or implied, for commercial use of the findings of the project.

The full scheme timeline is outlined via the link above but key dates are highlighted below:

Internal selection deadline –2^nd September 2019 (applicants will be informed of the internal selection outcome as soon as is possible after the deadline)

Preliminary stage deadline for selected nominee – 31^st October 2019

Full stage deadline for selected nominee – 30^th April 2020

AMS FLIER Programme Expression of Interest Form

The Academy of Medical Sciences has launched its second annual call for the  Future Leaders in Innovation, Enterprise and Research (FLIER) Programme
https://acmedsci.ac.uk/grants-and-schemes/mentoring-and-other-schemes/FLIER

People are invited to complete an Expression of Interest for the internal selection process (as detailed below) if they wish to apply to be part of this programme.

The Programme

Please note that this is not intended as a general leadership programme but is aimed to develop leaders of the future who can create collaborations across academia, industry, the NHS and government to drive innovation across the life sciences sector – i.e. researchers who need to work cross-sector

The Individual

• They are looking for individuals in the middle of their career, established within their own sector, with the seniority to effect organisational change and to undertake a cross-sector project currently or in the near future.
• Participants will have an emerging vision of how cross-sector working and collaboration could help maximise opportunities and solve the future challenges of research and healthcare. They will be looking to explore and shape their vision in dialogue with colleagues across sectors.
• They are looking for key characteristics including motivation, vision and potential to make a difference and lead change across the sectors, learning agility, and creative, innovative and radical thinking.
• Participants will be active in the research endeavour of the organisation in which they are working and will therefore have a wide range of outputs depending on the setting. Participants may have portfolio careers, but even if they are not spending all their time on research, we would expect this to be a key element of their role.

The first cohort of 17, which included Dr Niina Kolehmainen in IHS, can be seen here:

https://acmedsci.ac.uk/grants-and-schemes/mentoring-and-other-schemes/FLIER/flier-round-1-participants

Dr Niina Kolehmainen is, very kindly, willing to discuss her experience of participating in the first FLIER cohort, so those thinking of applying are encouraged to contact her in advance of making their application.

The employer has to commit to contributing £5,000, excl. VAT. towards the cost of the two year programme and, therefore we are holding this internal selection process.

Participants are expected to organise and fund their own travel.
Note that FLIER will provide accommodation for the residential workshops and some contribution to increased childcare during workshops.

Applicants must check that they are available for the specified dates of the events within the FLIER programme.

Selected applicants have to complete an application form, a two-page CV and upload a three minute video outlining the cross-sector work-based project that they would like to carry out as part of the FLIER programme.
These have to be submitted via Flexi-Grant by 5pm on Thursday 19 September 2019.

For the internal selection process, please send the following documents

• a completed Expression of Interest Form (see attachment)
• a 2-page CV covering education, past employment, major relevant contributions and achievements, such as key publications and patents, funding awards, prizes and awards, patents, spin-offs, commercialisation of products, evidence of impact, etc.

To Gwen Averley gwen.averley@ncl.ac.uk by 1pm on Tuesday 13 August