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Royal Academy of Engineering – SME Leaders Programme

Royal Academy Engineering

 

Are you working with engineering companies that would be interested in this funding opportunity?

Why not send them this information in order that they can consider making an application ?

The Royal Academy of Engineering, sponsored through the Enterprise Hub, invites applications for its small- and medium-sized enterprises leaders programme. This supports promising leaders of high growth engineering SMEs. Recipients receive a grant of between £10,000 to £15,000 towards the cost of training courses and executive education for themselves.

This scheme is open for applications  by SMEs until 4pm on 24 November 2016. For further details on the scheme click on this link.

 

 

 

Latest Funding Opportunities

The following is a snap-shot of funding opportunities that have been announced. Please follow the links for more information:

Academy of Medical Sciences

SUSTAIN pilot programme

This programme enables female researchers to thrive in their independent research careers by providing interactive career development workshops, a peer support network and one-to-one mentoring. The programme covers travel to London as well as hotel accommodation and optional childcare support during the first regional workshop.

Maximum award: Unknown

Closing date: 02 Dec 16

British Academy

Conference Program

This supports conferences on subjects in the humanities and social sciences held at the British Academy’s premises in London, UK. Funding covers the costs of administration, catering, preparation of delegate packs and promotional material, and contributes to travel and accommodation costs for speakers, chairs and convenors.

Maximum award: Unknown

Closing date: 24 Feb 17 (recurring)

Economic and Social Research Council

Celebrating impact prize

The Celebrating Impact Prize, now in its fifth year, is an annual opportunity to recognise and reward ESRC-funded researchers and ESRC associates. It celebrates outstanding ESRC research and success in interdisciplinary, collaborative working, partnerships, engagement and knowledge exchange activities that have led to significant impact.

Maximum award: £10,000

Closing date: 01 Dec 16

Wellcome Trust

Research career re-entry fellowships

These fellowships provide postdoctoral scientists with the opportunity to re-establish their scientific careers after a continuous break from research of at least two years. Fellowships are tenable for four years and cover salaries, research expenses, materials and consumables, animals and travel and subsistence.

Maximum award: Unknown

Closing date: 04 May 17

Sir Henry Wellcome postdoctoral fellowships

These fellowships enable newly qualified postdoctoral researchers the opportunity to start independent research careers, working in some of the best research environments in the world. Fellowships provide £250,000 over four years, covering the basic salary determined by the host institution, and research expenses such as materials and consumables, animals, travel and overseas subsistence.

Maximum award: £250,000

Closing date: 04 May 17

 

Seed Awards in Science

Seed Awards in Science help researchers develop new ideas to make them competitive for larger awards (from us or other organisations).

Maximum award: £25,000 – £100,000

Closing date: 16 Mar 17 (recurring)

 

If you are interested in submitting to any of the above calls you must contact your  RKEO Funding Development Officer with adequate notice before the deadline.

For more funding opportunities that are most relevant to you, 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.

European Research Council – Consolidator Grants

ercWhat are ERC Grants?

The ERC Work Programme 2017 sets out the objectives and principles of ERC funding. ERC Starting and Consolidator Principal Investigators must demonstrate the ground-breaking nature, ambition and feasibility of their scientific proposal. ERC grants are open to researchers of any nationality, who intend to conduct their research activity in any EU Member State or Associated Country .

The ERC’s frontier research grants operate on a ‘bottom-up’ basis without predetermined priorities. Applications can be made in any field of research with particular emphasis on the frontiers of science, scholarship and engineering6 . In particular, proposals of an interdisciplinary nature, which cross the boundaries between different fields of research, pioneering proposals addressing new and emerging fields of research or proposals introducing unconventional, innovative approaches and scientific inventions are encouraged.

The next call for the Consolidator Grant closes on 9th February 2017. Consolidator Grants can be up to a maximum of EUR 2,000,000 for a period of 5 years (pro rata for projects of shorter duration).

Are you at this stage?

  • Have you been awarded your first PhD > 7 and ≤ 12 years prior to 1 January 2017 – cut-off dates: PhD awarded from 1 January 2005 to 31 December 2009 (inclusive)?
  • Can you demonstrate research excellence?
  • Are you starting or consolidating your own independent research team or programme?
  • Do you have several important publications as main author or without the participation of your PhD supervisor?

The ERC guidance for Starting and Consolidator grants guidance has recently been updated.

What next?

If you are considering applying to this scheme, please contact Emily Cieciura, RKEO’s Research Facilitator: EU & International, as soon as possible.

 

Research Professional alerts are changing

Research-Professional-logo‘Research Fingerprinting’ is a new development on the Research Professional platform that delivers highly relevant funding opportunities to researchers.  This will go live at BU on Tuesday, 8th November.

How does it work?

Using advanced, highly-targeted algorithms, in combination with their extensive industry knowledge and refined discipline taxonomy, Research Fingerprinting generates personal funding alerts for the majority of the researchers at our institution, based on publicly available information about your research interests and published work.

Once deployed, fingerprinting will perfectly match our researchers with their research interests and help deliver the most relevant funding opportunities into your inbox every week. You will be able to edit your fingerprint if you find that the some of the disciplines do not match your research interests.

You will already have alerts set up and so when this is switched on, you will receive two alerts on a Friday. You can compare these to see which is finding the most relelvant funding opportunities. This should be the Fingerprint and so you can then remove your previous selected alerts. The fingerprint will update as your research interests grow.

When will we get it?

Research Fingerprints will go live on Tuesday, 8th November.  All academics with an account will also receive an email directly from Research Professional explaining what ‘research fingerprints’ are.  If you have any queries about the changes then please contact the RKEO Funding Development Team.

AHRC Town Meeting on Anti-Microbial Resistance in the Indoor and Built Environment

amrAHRC Cross-Disciplinary Networking and Information Event (Town Meeting) on Anti-Microbial Resistance in the Indoor and Built Environment

Event date Event time Event location
30/11/2016 10:00 am – 3:30 pm Amba Hotel, Bryanston St, London

The event will provide an opportunity to discuss the potential innovative contribution of the arts and humanities to cross-disciplinary collaborative research on AMR. (See the pre-call announcement).

The meeting will start at 10.30am (registration from 10.00am) and finish around 3.30pm, and participants will be able to:

  • hear background on the Research Councils AMR initiative and the AHRC-led call on AMR in the Indoor and Built Environment
  • network and explore possible research partnerships and collaborations to support potential future applications under the call
  • speak to Research Council staff about possible applications.

Who is the event for?

The event is open to academic researchers, both from the arts and humanities and other relevant research fields, who are interested in cross-disciplinary research relating to AMR in the built environment and to potential partners from outside academia who might be interested in the opportunity to initiate possible collaborations that might lead to research bids. Arts and Humanities researchers with related interests and expertise but who may not have previously engaged directly with AMR are welcome to attend to learn more about potential opportunities in this area.

The event provides a chance to:

  • find out about the cross-Council AMR initiative and the AHRC-led call for pump-priming grants on AMR in the Indoor and Built Environment due to be launched in November 2016
  • discuss with experts the challenges and opportunities of interdisciplinary working and co-delivery with end-users in this field
  • put questions about the funding call direct to funders
  • network with potential collaborators from other discipline areas or as end-users of research.

How to Register

If you are interested in attending the event please contact AMR@ahrc.ac.uk confirming your interest and providing a brief summary of no more than 300 words, outlining your current role/ organisational affiliation and relevant research / professional expertise as well as briefly stating your potential interest in the AMR in the Built/ Indoor Environment funding call.

Please Note: For those invited to attend the event this summary information will be shared among other participants to support the networking aspects of the event. Your application therefore needs to include a statement confirming that you are happy for this information to be shared with other participants if invited to attend the event.

The closing date for expressing your interest in attending the event is 20 November 2016.

For more information regarding the event please contact Samuel Lambshead 01793 416000 or email s.lambshead@ahrc.ac.uk

If you are interested in attending the town meeting then please let the RKEO Funding Development Team know as we would be interested in receiving a summary of the meeting.

Research Professional – all you need to know

Research-Professional-logoEvery BU academic has a Research Professional account which delivers weekly emails detailing funding opportunities in their broad subject area. To really make the most of your Research Professional account, you should tailor it further by establishing additional alerts based on your specific area of expertise. The Funding Development Team Officers can assist you with this, if required.

Research Professional have created several guides to help introduce users to ResearchProfessional. These can be downloaded here.

Quick Start Guide: Explains to users their first steps with the website, from creating an account to searching for content and setting up email alerts, all in the space of a single page.

User Guide: More detailed information covering all the key aspects of using ResearchProfessional.

Administrator Guide: A detailed description of the administrator functionality.

In addition to the above, there are a set of 2-3 minute videos online, designed to take a user through all the key features of ResearchProfessional. To access the videos, please use the following link: http://www.youtube.com/researchprofessional

Research Professional are running a series of online training broadcasts aimed at introducing users to the basics of creating and configuring their accounts on ResearchProfessional. They are holding monthly sessions, covering everything you need to get started with ResearchProfessional. The broadcast sessions will run for no more than 60 minutes, with the opportunity to ask questions via text chat. Each session will cover:

  • Self registration and logging in
  • Building searches
  • Setting personalised alerts
  • Saving and bookmarking items
  • Subscribing to news alerts
  • Configuring your personal profile

Each session will run between 10.00am and 11.00am (UK) on the fourth Tuesday of each month. You can register here for your preferred date:

22nd November 2016

These are free and comprehensive training sessions and so this is a good opportunity to get to grips with how Research Professional can work for you.

DfID Research Review

InternationalMapThe Department for International Development (DfID) has published a review of their research strategy.

This review, developed in consultation with the UK’s scientific community, sets out how DFID will invest an average of £390 million per year over the next 4 years.  Read the review here to find out what DfID’s vision and priority areas are.

 

 

UKRO Visit – Slides now available

UKRO logoRKEO were pleased to welcome UK Research Office’s BU account manager, Maribel Glogowski for our annual subscriber visit, on Tuesday 25th October. Maribel is based in Brussels, along with the rest of the UKRO team, so is BU’s perfect partner for keeping us up to date with funding developments in the EU.

UKRO is the European office of the UK Research Councils. It delivers a subscription-based advisory service for research organisations (in the main UK HEIs) and provides National Contact Point services on behalf of the UK Government. UKRO’s mission is to maximise UK engagement in EU-funded research, innovation and higher education activities. As a BU member of staff, you can sign up to receive email alerts direct to your inbox.

Maribel covered the following topics:

  • Updates on project management including post-referendum statements
  • Creative Europe
  • Erasmus+
  • Accessing the Horizon 2020 Societal Challenges

All the slides from the day are available in the MyBU Community for the Research & Knowledge Exchange Development Framework. Please select the International Pathway to access these slides – more resources are being added over the coming months.  All staff have been pre-enrolled into this community.

If you have any questions about this event or are considering applying to EU funding schemes, please contact Emily Cieciura (RKEO, Research Facilitator: EU & International)

 

Research Professional Fingerprinting – coming to you soon

Research-Professional-logo‘Research Fingerprinting’ is a new development on the Research Professional platform that delivers highly relevant funding opportunities to researchers.

How does it work?

Using advanced, highly-targeted algorithms, in combination with their extensive industry knowledge and refined discipline taxonomy, Research Fingerprinting generates personal funding alerts for the majority of the researchers at our institution, based on publicly available information about your research interests and published work.

Once deployed, fingerprinting will perfectly match our researchers with their research interests and help deliver the most relevant funding opportunities into your inbox every week.  You will be able to edit your fingerprint if you find that the some of the disciplines do not match your research interests.

You will already have alerts set up and so when this is switched on, you will receive two alerts on a Friday.  You can compare these to see which is finding the most relelvant funding opportunities.  This should be the Fingerprint and so you can then remove your previous selected alerts.  The fingerprint will update as your research interests grow.

When will we get it?

This post is to let you know that Research Fingerprints is coming soon.  It is now available for the majority of academics but we have yet to switch it on.  We will be rolling this out shortly and will notify you via another blog post.

 

 

Are you using technology for social good?

Technology in the hands

Digital technologies and the internet are providing new opportunities to address social challenges.  This phenomenon is known as digital social innovation (DSI). To explore what DSI is, who is working on it, and how they can be supported, a website has been launched www.digitalsocial.eu in partnership with the Waag Society and SUPSI, with funding from the European Commission DG Connect. The website features stories and case studies of DSI, along with information on funding and events for DSI. It also helps people and projects working on DSI to showcase their work and find new collaborators.

Two years on, DSI has come a long way. New organisations, projects and collaborations are popping up across Europe. Terms like crowdfunding, making, sharing economy and digital democracy are entering the mainstream. The number of incubators, accelerators and investment funds focused on tech for good has grown. Emerging technologies like blockchain and widely accessible 3D-printing have given DSI new potential.

How can you get involved?

  • Sign up: With over 1,000 organisations and 700 projects signed up,  it’s quick and easy to register and is your access point to the world of www.digitalsocial.eu.
  • Submit funding and events: There are two really simple forms which you can fill in  about funding and events. It doesn’t matter if you’re responsible for them, or if you just came across them on Twitter.
  • Talk to each other: The website allows you to see which organisations work with each other and which projects they work on. Please do reach out to organisations you work with and use the site to find new partners who you think might be able to help you. You never know what might result from a serendipitous conversation on  the website.
  • Spread the word: Please tell other digital social innovators about the website and encourage them to sign up. From Meet-ups to conferences and online communities, this  community is huge.
  • Provide  feedback: about the site.

To find out more about the types of projects showcased on this site and the blog post in full  – click here . A great way to start developing collaborations and identfying ways in which your research could influence policy and generate impact in the future.

Nine Dots Prize – a new prize for creative thinking in the social sciences

nine-dot-prizeFriday saw the launch of the Nine Dots Prize – a new prize for creative thinking in the social sciences. It is sponsored by the Kadas Prize Foundation and supported by CRASSH at the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Press.

The Prize will be awarded to the best response to its inaugural question: “Are digital technologies making politics impossible?” Applicants are asked to respond in 3,000 words. The Prize will be judged anonymously by its Board of 12 distinguished academics, journalists, authors and thinkers. The winner will receive $100,000 to support them in writing up a short book based on their response. They have the opportunity to spend a term as Visiting Fellow at CRASSH at the University of Cambridge and the book will be published by Cambridge University Press in an open access format. More details can be found at their website or via twitter @ninedotsprize, including closing and decision dates, and how to submit.

The Guardian have written the following article, which puts the prize in context.