We have opened calls for our Wellcome Trust funded SMALL GRANT and BROADENING OUR HORIZONS schemes.

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.

The scheme is open to scientific and clinical projects and will specifically encourage inter-disciplinary research across institutes and faculties.  The scheme will be aimed at high-quality individuals who have limited funding, in particular applications from early year researchers are encouraged.

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

THERE IS NEW PROCESS TO STREAMLINE COSTINGS AND ADMINISTRATION OF THESE AWARDS.   APPLICANTS ARE ASKED TO SUBMIT INDICATIVE COSTS AS PART OF THE APPLICATION (GUIDE: £5k -£10k MAX).  APPLICATIONS WILL BE FULLY COSTED BY RESEARCH SUPPORT OFFICERS (AND TRUST EQUIVALENTS WHERE NHS COSTS ARE INVOLVED) AFTER AN INITIAL ASSESSMENT BY THE PANEL OF THE QUALITY OF THE PROPOSAL AND PRIOR TO APPROVAL BEING GRANTED.

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

We will also be launching calls for the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Charity (formerly the “Special Trustees awards”) and Confidence in Concept schemes in the next week or so and I will forward details of these when they have been confirmed.

The next internal panel to consider applications to be submitted to the ESRC New Investigator Grant scheme will meet in April 2018.

New Investigator Grants form one element of ESRC’s support for early career researchers and the scheme is specifically aimed at supporting those looking to make the transition to an independent researcher through managing their first major research project. These grants replace their Future Research Leaders scheme. Full details are here: http://www.esrc.ac.uk/funding/funding-opportunities/new-investigator-grants/.

The call is open to high-quality candidates from anywhere in the world who have a maximum of four years’ postdoctoral experience and the support of an eligible UK research organisation. Grants ranging from £100,000 to £300,000 full Economic Cost (fEC) can be awarded, with grants between 3 and 5 years.

The call is open to applicants both with and without a permanent academic post, but they must have strong support from a host UK institution. This includes a mentor, and provision of career development support which includes a programme of activities tailored to the needs of the applicant covering project management, methods development, KE activities and impact training, and international networking.

Proposals are welcomed across the full disciplinary range of the social sciences and at the interface with the wider sciences, however the social sciences must represent at least 50 per cent of the research focus and effort.

Following the previously agreed protocol, all applications to be submitted to this scheme will go through an internal selection panel. Candidates are required to submit a 6 page case for support (following ESRC guidance), a 2 page CV and a 2 page mentor CV. Applications must have full support of the Research Director and Head of School to be put forward to the internal panel. There will be representatives from all 3 Faculties on the panel, which will be chaired by the Dean of Research and Innovation in HaSS.

All documents for the panel should be submitted to Wendy Davison (wendy.davison@ncl.ac.uk). The deadline for submission of documents for the internal panel is 12pm on Monday 16^th April 2018. Applications submitted after this deadline will be required to submit to the following panel.

1 May 2018, 4pm (outline applications)                 11 July, 4pm (invited full applications)

NC3Rs PhD Studentship

https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/funding/studentships?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=March%202018

Up to 12 awards are available at £30k pa for 3 years.

This year, up to 3 additional joint awards are available with the British Heart Foundation (BHF), these should seek to obtain 3Rs impact in the field of cardiovascular research.

There will be a one hour webinar on 3 April 2018, registration link here:

https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/events/nc3rs-phd-studentship-webinar

Deadline for outline applications is 4pm on 1 May

A letter of support from the Head of Department and the main Supervisor’s CV (to include supervisory experience and not to exceed three sides of A4) are also required.

Please email the below to studentships@nc3rs.org.uk before 4pm, 1 May 2018:

• Completed outline form – 2017 version
• Head of Department letter of support
• Main supervisor’s CV

Invited full applications are to be submitted via Je-S

See full details and guidance at the URL above.

Call for Translational Award applications

Deadlines for upcoming rounds:

April 2018 round

• Preliminary outline application deadline – 23^rd April 2018
• Full application deadline – 5^th September 2018

October 2018 round

• Preliminary outline application deadline – 15^th October 2018
• Full application deadline – tbc

The Translational Award supports early stage development of cardiovascular medicines and technologies for up to £250,000.

Our Translational Awards Committee meets twice a year to consider applications and provide support and advice.

It is a two stage process. All preliminary outlines will be considered by the Committee and if successful, you will be invited to submit a full application, which will be assessed at the next meeting.

For further details visit https://www.bhf.org.uk/translationalaward or email the team at researchtranslation@bhf.org.uk

Research Experience Placements

The Research Experience Placements (REPs) scheme provides support for undergraduate summer research placements.

The scheme is now open for 2018 and an application form and further information can be found here (application form also attached).

Closing date: Thursday 29 March 2018 at 1pm

2018 BBSRC-REP-Application

31 May 2018, 4pm (outline applications) (call opens 3 April 2018)              November 2018 TBC (invited full applications)

MRC Experimental Medicine Challenge Grants (EMCG): Discovery science in humans

https://www.mrc.ac.uk/funding/browse/experimental-medicine-challenge-grants/experimental-medicine-challenge-grants-discovery-science-in-humans/

Experimental medicine is a broad term and refers to “investigation undertaken in humans, relating where appropriate to model systems, to identify mechanisms of pathophysiology or disease, or to demonstrate proof-of-concept evidence of the validity and importance of new discoveries or treatments.”

EM studies should be hypothesis led/defining/refining

N.B. MRC is aware that the proportion of grants awarded in the field of experimental medicine is very low across all MRC Boards (only 25% of MRC grants even involve humans).

EMCG will fund studies which address the biggest gaps in our understanding of the causes and progression of human disease and which will produce major new mechanistic insights, with potential application to new therapeutic or diagnostic approaches and opportunities for “reverse translation” to basic research.

Applications should aim to produce major improvements in the understanding of human disease mechanisms, and must be:

• Challenge-led: As well as addressing “challenging” research questions, all proposals must involve an experimental intervention or “challenge” in humans, perturbing the system to explore disease mechanism. A challenge may be pharmacological, immunological, physiological, psychological, infectious etc.
• Human-focused: The focus should be on understanding human disease through experimental investigation in humans. While projects may include a small element of non-human work (if informed by or informing the work in humans), the focus of the project should be on human participants.
• Ambitious and innovative: Proposals should address important medical questions in new ways. Proposals should be sufficiently ambitious and demanding to warrant funding through this scheme rather than through standard research grant support. Proposals may use novel readouts or technologies.
• Experiment-driven: Proposals should be structured around an experiment designed to address a mechanistic question with a clear plan for establishing causal relationships and mechanisms. Proposals may include the use of drugs, other interventions or measures with established safety profiles in new settings/conditions. e.g. repurposing drugs as tool compounds to probe disease mechanism.
• Hypothesis-led/defining/refining: EM is more than hypothesis-free characterisation, and is more exploratory than hypothesis-testing confirmatory work. EM is more than just data collection: proposals may include, but should not solely focus on, deep characterisation/phenotyping of subjects.
• Funding available: Up to £10m is available. The EMCG scheme will support a range of award scales, from smaller, focused, more exploratory and highly innovative projects (based e.g. on an intellectually sound hypothesis but perhaps lacking extensive pilot data), to large programmatic awards based on a more substantial platform of evidence. It is expected that most grants would be between 3-5 years’ duration.

Applicants are encouraged to explore collaboration with industry to facilitate the above experimental approach (however this is not mandatory).

If an industrial partner is collaborating on the grant applicants, MICA forms will not need to be completed for the outline stage but you will need to submit a MICA and signed Heads of Terms with the full application

Outline applications to be submitted via Je-S. Outline case for support form on website.

Please see website for EMCG assessment criteria, further guidance document and FAQs.

Note that they expect detailed experimental plans; methodologically and statistically rigorous in design; and, for longer-term programmes, risk mitigation plans.

There will be milestones and stage gates to de-risk.

The following are out of remit for this initiative:

• Full translational programmes developing or evaluating new pharmacological interventions (these are however within the wider MRC remit, see the MRC DPFS scheme);
• Observational studies involving no experimental challenge. Proposals which are predominantly descriptive are unlikely to be shortlisted;
• Applications solely limited to screening chemical libraries, investigating the mechanism of action of novel compounds or dosing strategies.

The webinar held last time they ran this scheme (2015) is available here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvL-_yOv34A&t=268s

Please note that they reserve the right to amend the review process in the case of high demand

We are delighted to announce the inaugural call for applications to the Hamied Foundation UK-India AMR Visiting Professorship scheme.

The scheme, generously supported by the Yusuf and Farida Hamied Foundation, will offer awards of up to £5000 to support UK researchers wishing to visit India, to develop long-term collaborations in the highly-important area of antimicrobial resistance research.

Deadline for applications is Friday 06 April 2018, 16:00 GMT and details on how to apply can be found on the scheme webpage. Please see Hamied Foundation AMR eFlyer for further information. I would be most grateful if you could forward this to any relevant departments or individuals that may be interested in this opportunity.

If there are any enquiries, please direct these to amr@acmedsci.ac.uk.

The Wellcome Trust recently announced that it was changing its public engagement strategy: https://wellcome.ac.uk/news/public-engagement-fund-relaunch-tighter-focus-outcomes      /     https://wellcome.ac.uk/news/wellcomes-approach-engaging-public-going-change

Today, 5^th March 2018, the Wellcome has launched its new Public Engagement Fund: https://wellcome.ac.uk/funding/public-engagement-fund

The revised fund supports projects of between £25K and £3m for up to 3 years.

Wellcome are looking for creative approaches to engage the public but these must align with their PE goals.

The proposal, must include:

• The main outcomes you want to achieve during the project, the outputs (activities) you’ll undertake, and any longer-term impacts you hope your project will have
• The people you want to reach, and why you want to work with them
• Previous activities, knowledge or learning that your proposal will build on
• An outline plan of how you will deliver the project
• How you’ll track if your project has been successful in achieving its outcomes
• How you’ll share what you’ve learned.

Resources for those interested in this opportunity include;

Wellcome’s public engagement goals: https://wellcome.ac.uk/what-we-do/our-work/public-engagement

“What good proposals looks like” (pdf): https://wellcome.ac.uk/sites/default/files/public-engagement-fund-what-good-proposals-look-like.pdf

Upcoming deadlines:

• Proposals for grants of £25,000 to £250,000 – 3^rd May 2018 and 28^th June 2018 (there will be four deadlines per year).
• Over £250k –  this is a rolling deadline but an expression of interest must be submitted to the Wellcome before applying.

Please ensure to read the full call details via the link above.

https://www.mrc.ac.uk/funding/browse/uk-kenya-non-communicable-diseases/uk-kenya-joint-partnership-on-non-communicable-diseases/

Budget: £2.2m total with approx. 4 projects supported

Duration: Up to 3 years

Deadline: 9^th April 2018, outline submission via email – 09^th May 2018 full call deadline via Je-S

The Medical Research Council (MRC) and the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Kenya are inviting research proposals to the Newton Fund’s UK-Kenya Joint Partnership on Non-Communicable Diseases. This initiative will provide funding for high quality collaborative research projects focused on addressing non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in Kenya.

The proposal should be developed by a UK PI and a Kenyan PI. Principal Investigators may only submit one application to this scheme as principal investigator, but may be involved in more applications if listed as a co-investigator.

Under this first MRC-NRF initiative, research proposals must specifically address one or more of the following diseases:

• Cancer.
• Cardiovascular diseases.
• Chronic respiratory diseases.
• Diabetes.

The funders are welcoming research proposals across the spectrum of research activities including, but not limited to, basic discovery research, epidemiology, understanding the mechanisms of disease, novel detection and diagnosis, development of therapeutics/interventions. Proposals must fall within the remits of both funders.

Research proposals must seek to generate scientific outcomes of relevance to the prevention, treatment, management and/or control of the above listed diseases in Kenya. The purpose of this call is to support research projects; however, the funders are also encouraging projects that incorporate elements of capacity building within them.

All proposals for this call must meet Newton Fund requirements. In particular, proposals must be compliant with Official Development Assistance (ODA) funding rules.

Please ensure to read the full call details and guidance documents, available through the link above.

9 April 2018, 5pm

Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) & Wellcome Trust

Improving Science Education

https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/projects-and-evaluation/how-to-apply/themed-rounds/improving-science-education/

https://wellcome.ac.uk/funding/improving-science-education

We are looking for interventions or approaches that are informed and supported by encouraging evidence of impact on attainment and/or progression. Interventions should focus on science attainment and/or progression and we are particularly interested in approaches that are likely to be beneficial for disadvantaged learners.

Interventions should be practical for schools and we expect project teams to include relevant expertise to ensure that approaches are feasible for schools to deliver.

The Wellcome Trust and EEF have undertaken pieces of work that we hope will support applications to this funding scheme and these can be found on the website.

Project criteria

Successful proposals will:

• Focus on raising the science attainment and/or the progression of pupils within the age range 5-16 in UK schools. We are particularly interested in approaches that seek to improve the attainment of disadvantaged learners (pupils eligible for pupil premium funding) and would expect applicants to be willing to work in challenging schools. The progression of students is likely to focus on progression to study a science A-level or other post-16 science qualifications
• Be informed and supported by encouraging evidence of an impact on attainment and progression. If available, evidence of the impact of the approach being proposed should be provided. Please refer to the Sutton Trust and the EEF’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit and the recent review “A review of SES and science learning in formal educational settings”, both available on the EEF website as a starting point.
• Be practical, appropriate, affordable and scalable. Our aim is to identify interventions and approaches that, if shown to be successful, could be taken on by other schools. Therefore we are only interested in testing initiatives that are practical and affordable for schools. We also need to understand what training and support is needed so that schools and teachers can use the intervention effectively.
• Be willing and able to be independently evaluated. We will rigorously evaluate the impact on attainment and, if appropriate, impact on progression of the projects, wherever possible by randomly allocating which schools or pupils receive it. We will appoint an independent evaluator, and work with successful applicants to design an appropriate evaluation plan. Note that this does not need to be included in your project plan and budget.
• Be led by a project team with expertise in the relevant areas. For example, the team should have experience of delivery with teachers, or within schools. Ideally, the team would include someone with extensive teaching experience. We welcome applications from a variety of organisation including, schools, universities, charities and for-profit organisations.

Type of projects

We are interested in projects that either:

• Test the impact of a fully developed intervention through a randomised controlled trial (with the evaluation aspect designed in collaboration with the independent evaluator). For this to be applicable the intervention would need to have been previously been delivered in a number (at least 10) schools and be fully developed in terms of the resources and training required. There would also be clear descriptions of what good fidelity to the intervention looks like and evidence indicating that the programme is likely to impact on attainment. An example of an existing EEF project that met this criteria is Thinking, Doing, Talking Science, which had previously been evaluated in 16 primary schools through a match study. In addition there was background evidence that supported the rational for the programme.
• Test the feasibility and collective evidence of promise of a more developmental project through a pilot evaluation (again, with the evaluation aspect of the project being designed in collaboration with the independent evaluator). For projects to be suitable for this funding they would need to have evidence (from the literature) supporting the rationale for the approach and why we would expect this to lead to the intended outcomes. They would also need to demonstrate the need for the project and that they are not re-developing something that already exists.

How to apply

To submit an application please register for the Improving Science Education Round on the Apply Now section of the EEF website and complete the online form before 9^th April 2018.

We are expecting a high level of interest in this round. The Application Form is designed to be short and easy to fill in.

Following the closing date, we will review the applications received against our criteria. We will begin conversations with a small number of the most promising proposals, with a view to jointly developing a project and evaluation plan with the independent evaluator that will be appointed by the EEF.

We do not expect to make final funding decisions until the end of June 2018.