We have opened calls for our Wellcome Trust funded SMALL GRANT and BROADENING OUR HORIZONS schemes and I’d be obliged if you could circulate details to staff in your Units.

The SMALL GRANT SCHEME aims to provide seedcorn funding to allow researchers to:

• test the feasibility of initial ideas and of potential future studies;
• produce preliminary data;
• raise the quality of outputs by supporting additional experimentation often required by the higher ranking journals.

This call includes research in the humanities and social sciences that addresses any aspect of health.  This scheme specifically encourages inter-disciplinary research across Institutes and Faculties.

The scheme will be aimed at individuals who have limited funding, in particular applications from early year researchers are encouraged.

Funds will be made available for projects to commence in September 2019.

Current submission deadline: 01 July 2019  Applications should be submitted to marjorie.holbrough@ncl.ac.uk

https://www.ncl.ac.uk/medicalsciences/research/wellcome/#smallgrantsscheme

The BROADENING OUR HORIZONS SCHEME crosses all career stages and pathways (researchers, core facilities’ staff and technicians).

The scheme will provide funding to cover travel, accommodation costs and meeting expenses (where no external funding schemes exist for this purpose) to allow for:

• attendance at specialist training courses or conferences;
• short placements in other labs and scientific facilities develop collaborations, strengthen existing skills or to develop skills and expertise in a new technique or discipline;
• organisation of small meetings and sandpit events in order to bring researchers from different research disciplines together;

and for Early Career Researchers

• to allow them to receive mentorship from a research leader in their field outside Newcastle in order to develop their own career and professional network and to increase links between external leaders and Newcastle.

THIS IS A REACTIVE SCHEME, SO APPLICATIONS CAN BE MADE AT ANY TIME, AND FUNDS WILL BE DISTRIBUTED UNTIL THEY RUN OUT.

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/medicalsciences/research/wellcome/#broadeningourhorizons

MRC/ESRC/CIHR Pre-call announcement: UK-Canada Diabetes Research Team Grants

https://mrc.ukri.org/funding/browse/uk-canada/uk-canada-diabetes-research-team-grants/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery

Through the UK-Canada Diabetes Research Team Grants, the MRC, ESRC and CIHR aim to:

• support world-leading collaborative research teams aimed at tackling diabetes
• enhance existing partnerships and develop new partnerships between the UK and Canada in the area of diabetes research
• strengthen the strategic relationship between the UK and Canada.

The focus of the collaborative projects will be upon ‘mechanisms and translational solutions’. Projects should focus on one or more of the following key diabetes knowledge gaps:

• genetic variability
• molecular mechanisms, including immune-mediated beta cell injury
• human implementation pilot studies to reverse type 2 diabetes through physical activity and nutrition.

Applications that include researchers with expertise in the social sciences, in addition to biomedical researchers are welcome.
Social scientists can bring an understanding of, for example, individual behaviour, economic evaluation, inequalities, the wider political economy, and wider environmental influences.

This is meant to focus on research applicable to UK and Canadian settings, not on global health.

Each grant will require a UK PI and a Canadian Nominated Principal Applicant (NPA) who will equally share leadership and project management for each project funded.
The UK and Canadian applicants will develop a common research plan and jointly prepare the full proposal to be submitted to the MRC.
An abbreviated application will be submitted to CIHR by Canadian applicants.

Funds available:

UK:

• The MRC and ESRC will make up to £2 million available.
• UK-based applicants may request up to a maximum of £333,333 per proposal to cover the UK component of each research team grant.
• Projects must be three years in duration and must start on 1 April 2020.

CIHR:

• The total amount available from CIHR for the Canadian component of this funding opportunity is $2,700,000, enough to fund approximately six grants.
• The maximum amount per grant is $150,000 per year for up to three years for a total of $450,000 per grant.

Full programme details will be available in the coming weeks.

UK queries to international@mrc.ukri.org

17 June 2019, 5pm (Concept Notes)        3 September 2019, 5pm (invited full applications)

Wellcome Trust Open Research Fund

https://wellcome.ac.uk/funding/schemes/open-research-fund

Up to £50K is available for up to one year open to individuals or teams of up to six members from anywhere in the world to develop, pilot and evaluate innovative approaches that aim to make health research more open

you must propose to:

• trial new tools, resources or ways of working that enable research outputs to be discovered, accessed and re-used
• evaluate the impact, benefits and risks of your work.

Wellcome particularly welcomes proposals that do one or more of the following:

• incentivise researchers to practise open research, for example by developing new metrics to assess impact, or by improving how good practice is recognised, embedded and rewarded
• transform the way researchers publish, for example by developing open source tools that increase the use of pre-prints, or by testing new ways to support open peer review or to report null or negative findings
• improve how research outputs are made findable, accessible, interoperable, re-usable (FAIR) and reproducible, for example by pioneering approaches to enrich and standardise metadata or to assess the reproducibility of findings
• develop open platforms or tools, for example to combine or repurpose datasets and other research outputs from different locations and disciplines, to crowdsource ideas, or to mine vast quantities of research data and content.

Complete a three-page Concept Note form by 17 June

This is an annual call. In 2018 Wellcome received 96 applications and, as an experiment, 78 of those applications are available with brief summaries explaining why they were successful/unsuccessful – i.e. how well the application fitted the criteria of the call.

These are available here:

https://wellcome.ac.uk/funding/open-research-fund-applications-submitted

Anyone planning to make an application to this call would be well advised to study the feedback to these applications so as to decide whether your idea is in remit for the call and how best to address your case (e.g. feasibility, degree of innovation, planned dissemination, community buy-in and evaluation of impact).

The 8 awards are listed here:

https://wellcome.ac.uk/funding/people-and-projects/grants-awarded?scheme_id=3580

In June there will be three British Council calls for funds aimed at building research collaborations in Mexico, and developing impact for current or previous Newton holders.

There will be a British Council-led Workshop

Would you like to instigate or enhance research collaborations with Mexico?  Are you a current or previous Newton holder that could develop more impact?  Could you use some funds to help you do that?

If so, you’re invited to a British Council led workshop to explore three forthcoming funding calls. Specifically, the June calls will be:

NEWTON FUND-INSTITUTIONAL LINKS
a. IL-Transformative Innovation: to initiate collaborations between academic groups and institutions to support the exchange of research and innovation expertise and the translation of research knowledge into tangible benefits aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals focusing on promoting systemic change. 

1. IL-Technology Transfer: for the establishment of working groups to develop research, development and innovation projects, focusing on solutions for priority socio-economic challenges. This activity will support bi-national partnerships to integrate the proof of concept of a joint technology transfer project..  

NEWTON FUND IMPACT SCHEMES
This grant is designed to provide previous and current Newton award holders with the opportunity to unlock further impact from their work in a way that strengthens the impact of their projects. The intention is that selected proposals will add tangible value in communities both in Mexico and in the UK. 

The workshop will explore how best to position your research, and allow you to pitch your work to the fund managers.

Details: 22^nd May, 10.00 – 13.00, Old Library Building 10.00 – 13.00

You may wish to stay for all or part of the session.  A more detailed agenda and registration details will follow.

If you would like to briefly pitch your idea to the British Council, please email Victoria.bainbridge@ncl.ac.uk to express your interest.