BU Research Blog

The following funding opportunities have been announced. Please follow the links for more information:

Economic and Social Research Council

ESRC and the Welsh Government invite proposals for a Wales Centre for Public Policy. The centre will bring together the ministerial expert advice function currently provided by the Public Policy Institute for Wales (PPIW) with the functions of a newly established What Works Centre, to be known as What Works Wales.  The centre and its component parts will be established from October 2017 and run until September 2022, subject to a satisfactory interim review.

Maximum award: £6.1 million. Closing date: 4pm, 16/03/2017

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

The Engineering and Physical Science Research Council invites expressions of interest for its Supergen leaders energy networks programme. This is the first of a two-stage process designed to launch the next phase of the Supergen Programme. This stage features a competition to identify the appropriate ‘Research Leader’ for a future Supergen hub, in Energy Networks. Up to £150K is available for this initial stage of the process, which will cover the six months that the successful applicant will build their consortia. This can be used to buy-out teaching (if required), fund networking activities, workshops and general admin support during this period.  Expressions of interest are due by 23/03/17.

Maximum award: £150,000. Closing date: 4pm 20/04/17

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council invites expressions of interest for its call on supergen leaders in bioenergy. This is the first of a two-stage process designed to launch the next phase of the Supergen Programme. This stage features a competition to identify the appropriate ‘Research Leader’ for a future Supergen hub, in Bioenergy. Up to £150K is available for this initial stage of the process, which will cover the six months that the successful applicant will build their consortia. This can be used to buy-out teaching (if required), fund networking activities, workshops and general admin support during this period.  Expressions of interest are due by 23/03/17.

Maximum award: £150,000. Closing date: 4pm 20/04/17

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council invites expressions of interest for its call on supergen leaders in offshore renewable energy. This is the first of a two-stage process designed to launch the next phase of the Supergen Programme. This stage features a competition to identify the appropriate ‘Research Leader’ for a future Supergen hub, in Offshore Renewable Energy. Up to £150K is available for this initial stage of the process, which will cover the six months that the successful applicant will build their consortia. This can be used to buy-out teaching (if required), fund networking activities, workshops and general admin support during this period.  Expressions of interest are due by 23/03/17.

Maximum award: £150,000. Closing date: 4pm 20/04/17

Medical Research Council

The Medical Research Council, under the biomedical catalyst programme, invites proposals for its call on regenerative medicine research committee. This opportunity supports translation of fundamental discoveries toward benefit to human health. The Biomedical Catalyst: Regenerative Medicine Research Committee (RMRC) provides support for high quality proposals that may underpin or progress the development of  regenerative medicine therapies to improve human health. The RMRC: Supports confidence in concept studies that if successful will promote the translation of fundamental discoveries toward benefits to human health, thereby accelerating the transition from discovery research to mature translational development projects; Funds preliminary work or feasibility studies to establish the viability of an approach, through addressing focussed research questions needed to unlock progress in pre-clinical development and/or early clinical testing of novel regenerative medicine therapies; Forms part of the MRC’s Translational Research Strategy and forms part of the Biomedical Catalyst funding stream, operating in conjunction with the Developmental Pathway Funding Scheme. Funding is at 80% fEC.

Maximum award: not specified. Closing date: 15/03/17

The Medical Research Council invites proposals for its new investigator research grant in neurosciences and mental health. This supports researchers who are capable of becoming independent principal investigators and who are ready to take the next step towards that goal within the area of neurosciences and mental health. Applicants are expected to combine time spent on the NIRG with a portfolio of other activities, such as time spent on other research grants or clinical duties, teaching, administration duties, or other time spent in faculty.

Maximum award: not specified. Closing date: please check call information for details.

The Medical Research Council invites applications for its partnership grant in neurosciences and mental health. Partnership grants provide core funds for one to five years to support partnerships between diverse groupings of researchers and can be used for infrastructure support, platform activities and for bringing together managed consortia or multidisciplinary collaborations. The grant will fund such items as: Studentship allocations; Research centres; Equipment and materials; Networking/collaboration; Directed grants to institutions, research groups etc; Institutional development; Hosting conferences.

Maximum award: not specified. Closing date: please check call information for details.

The Medical Research Council invites applications for its programme grants in neurosciences and mental health. Programme grants provide larger, longer term (five years) and renewable programme funding. They aim to help the medical science community to ‘think bigger’. A programme is defined as a coordinated and coherent group of related projects, which may be developed to address an inter-related set of questions across a broad scientific area.

Maximum award: not specified. Closing date: please check call information for details.

Natural Environment Research Council

The Natural Environment Research Council invites proposals for its third environmental risks to infrastructure innovation funding call, which supports innovation projects that apply existing research to industry challenges. Preference is given to the following topics: tools and methods to help understand the propagation of impacts of environmental hazards as a result of interdependencies between infrastructure assets, including from international connections and supply chains; the impact of sequences of hazard events or combinations of hazards on the infrastructure system; space weather impacts on UK infrastructure; lightning impacts on UK infrastructure; scour of structures in rivers and estuaries. Expressions of interest are due by

Maximum award: not specified. Closing date: Please check individual competition details.

Royal Society

The Royal Society invites proposals for its scientific meetings. These two-day meetings drive forward discussion between science and other topics that have previously been beyond the scope of a traditional Discussion Meeting. Our scientific programme offers a unique opportunity for you to present an international, two-day conference in your field, with the chance for publication in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society following the event.

Maximum award: Not specified. Closing date: 03/04/17

If you are interested in submitting to any of the above calls you must contact RKEO with adequate notice before the deadline. Please note that some funding bodies specify a time for submission as well as a date. Please confirm this with your RKEO Funding Development Officer You can set up your own personalised alerts on Research Professional. If you need help setting these up, just ask your School’s/Faculty’s Funding Development Officer in RKEO or view the recent blog post here. If thinking of applying, why not add notification of your interest on Research Professional’s record of the bid so that BU colleagues can see your intention to bid and contact you to collaborate.