BU Research Blog

The Research and Knowledge Exchange Office is pleased to announce the launch of the Acorn Fund (Acceleration Of Research & Networking) for Early Career Researchers.

This new scheme will provide c. five awards, of up to £5,000 each, to support BU’s ECRs, with the most promising talent, to gain experience of managing and leading their own pilot research projects. These award support BU’s commitment to the Concordat to Support to Career Development of Researchers and is made possible by the BU Fusion Investment Fund

There will be a strong link to the new ECR Network and the ECR Showcase event, also being launched in 2018. In this way, those who do not benefit directly from the Acorn funds scheme by receiving funding, will benefit indirectly though interaction with those ECRs who receive support via the scheme.

An ECR, for the purpose of this scheme is the REF definition modified to: an ECR in this case is defined as someone who started their research career on or after 1 August 2013. This is the point at which they held a contract of employment of 0.2 FTE or greater, which included a primary employment function of undertaking ‘research’ or ‘teaching and research’, with any HE or other organisation, whether in the UK or overseas

Find out more and apply. The closing date for applications is 18th April 2018. As these require faculty support, start your application and obtain faculty approval as soon as possible.

To assist with the budget section, please refer to the RKE Sample Costs, within the Research > Pre-award area on the staff intranet.

Please address any queries to RKEDevFramework@bournemouth.ac.uk.