Research Support Blog
Funding Opportunities and more from the Research & Knowledge Exchange Team
UKRO is holding two European Research Council Starting Grants Information and Proposal Writing Events for prospective applicants.
1. ERC Starting Grants Information and Proposal Writing Event (London, Wednesday 19 July 2017)
2. ERC Starting Grants Information and Proposal Writing Event (Edinburgh, Wednesday 26 July 2017)
Attendance is free, but registration (following the above links) is mandatory. You may need to create an UKRO account (free for all university staff) to access the registration links.
The current call for the University’s Research Internal Support Fund will be closing on 3rd July.
Applications to the Research Internal Support Fund can be for a range of research-related activities, such as participation at conferences of international standing, the preparation of large-scale bids (in general over £150,000, depending on the discipline) for external research funding, or lead to outputs of REF-able quality. Awards may cover direct costs such as travel and accommodation, teaching time buy-out and research assistance, and conducting preparatory research trials.
The Vice-Chancellor’s Early Career Research Scholarship is now open, with a deadline of 26th of May 2017.
The Vice-Chancellor’s Early Career Research Scholarship is a one-year scheme that offers focussed support to promising early career researchers joining the University. All scholars will become members of a network that will meet on a regular basis to discuss research ideas and share expertise. These meetings will offer scholars the opportunity to discuss new developments in their research area. Furthermore, a tailored training programme and a dedicated support for bid writing activities will be provided.
In light of a number of queries received from academic colleagues in recent weeks, it is clear that there is still some uncertainty about the position of UK researchers in relation to applying for EU research funding in light of the referendum result and the UK’s impending departure from the EU. The Research Development Team therefore thought it would be useful to summarise the current position and to point colleagues towards additional sources of information about post-referendum related issues.
The over-arching message is that, at least until the UK officially leaves the EU (currently expected to be in March 2019), there is no change in UK-based applicants’ ability to bid and be awarded funding from the main EU research & innovation funding programmes (Horizon 2020, but also Erasmus+). Those colleagues interested in applying for funding from these sources should continue to pursue these opportunities and work with their partners across Europe to develop and submit their proposals as normal.
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has released details of funding calls it plans to launch in 2017/18.
The list of calls contains only very high-level information at this stage, including the call title, relevant thematic area and proposed call issue date. Further details on each call will be available when they are officially launched.
Colleagues can sign up for weekly email alerts on new/upcoming EPSRC calls here.
In a recent post on Research Professional, Phil Ward (Deputy Director of Research at the University of Kent) outlines a top ten of tips on making, developing and sustaining international research collaborations. These tips make a great starting point for anyone looking to expand their international connections, which are increasingly important in the age of the Global Challenges Research Fund and Newton Fund.
See below for the ten tips. The full article is available to view here.
(Note: you will need to log in to your Research Professional account if you want to access the article off-campus. If you have forgotten your password you can reset it, your username is your Salford email address.)
Top Tips for International Collaboration
1. Start small, as they have as little spare time as you do
Starting an international collaboration is a considerable undertaking for both partners. Both of you are exploring links that have considerable potential, but take a lot of work and time to develop. It is therefore worth starting small. You don’t have to collaborate on, say, a global challenges bid immediately. Rather, consider joint authorship on a paper, a joint conference session, or a short exchange.
Pre-call announcement
The ESRC will shortly be launching a call under the UK in a Changing Europe initiative for Brexit Priority Grants. These are to support additional activity (including research synthesis and potential new short-term research activity) related to the process of the UK leaving the European Union.
The grants will be between £100,000 and £300,000 (100 per cent fEC, with the ESRC contributing 80 per cent fEC) and for a duration of up to 18 months. The ESRC expects grants to commence on 1 April 2017.
EURAXESS, the European researcher jobs and mobility portal, has recently had an update. It is now much more user friendly, with the facility to search for funding opportunities.
The search pages can be found here.
Please see the following call from the British Academy for interdisciplinary collaborative projects:
In partnership with the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society (‘the Academies’), the APEX award (Academies Partnership in Supporting Excellence in Cross-disciplinary research award) scheme offers established independent researchers, with a strong track record in their respective area, an exciting opportunity to pursue genuine interdisciplinary and curiosity-driven research to benefit wider society.
The objectives of this scheme are to:
* support outstanding interdisciplinary research which is unlikely to be supported through conventional funding programmes
* promote collaboration across disciplines, with a particular emphasis on the boundary between science and engineering and the social sciences and humanities
* support researchers with an outstanding track record, in developing their research in a new direction through collaboration with partners from other disciplines
Please see the following announcement from UKRO:
The Enterprise Europe Network, in partnership with Innovate UK, is organising a National Information Day and official launch event to introduce the 2017 round of calls for Horizon 2020 Societal Challenge 5 – Climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials on 23 November in Birmingham.
The event, which is free to attend, will introduce the calls for proposals in 2017, present insights and priorities from the European Commission, provide information on the support available to UK applicants and offer numerous networking opportunities to help forge the winning partnerships for future applications. In addition, National Contact Points (NCPs) from the UK, Ireland, Poland and Cyprus will be present to help broker potential collaborations.