Tagged / Royal Society

Newton Fund – Call for Applications.

BU research, Funding opportunities, Research news

The Newton Fund is an initiative with the aim of developing the long-term sustainable growth and welfare of partner countries through building research and innovation capacity. It forms part of the UK’s Official Development Assistance commitment. The Newton Fund Partner Countries are: Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam.

Newton Advanced Fellowships

The Academy of Medical Sciences, British Academy and Royal Society are inviting applications to the first round of the Newton Advanced Fellowships as part of the Newton Fund. Newton Advanced Fellowships provide established researchers with an opportunity to develop the research strengths and capabilities of their research group or network through training, collaboration and reciprocal visits with a partner in the UK. Awards last for up to three years and are available to support researchers across the natural sciences including engineering, clinical or patient-oriented research, social sciences and humanities. Up to £37,000 is available each year for:

  • A salary top up (maximum £5,000) for the group or network leader from the partner country.
  • Research support (up to £15,000) to cover costs for studentships, staff, consumables or equipment.
  • Travel and subsistence (up to £12,000) to cover travel costs of the UK partner to the international partner and/or travel of the international partner to the UK.
  • Training (up to £5,000) to support the career development of the applicant and their research group or network.
The closing date for applications is 17:00, 22/10/2014. 
For further information, please visit the funder’s websites:
The Academy of Medical Sciences – www.acmedsci.ac.uk/newton-advanced

Newton Mobility Grants

The British Academy, Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society are inviting applications to the first round of the Newton Mobility Grants as part of the Newton Fund.
This scheme helps strengthen the research and innovation capacity of researchers from Partner Countries by facilitating exchanges of researchers. Applicants should be researchers from academic establishments or government-funded research institutes. Awards last for up to two years and are available to support researchers across the natural sciences, engineering, social sciences and humanities. Applications must include a researcher from the UK and a researcher from an eligible partner country. Awards will cover costs for travel, subsistence and research expenses. The grant must be based around a joint research project.

  • The British Academy programme is known as Newton Mobility Grants. Grants are offered up to a maximum of £10,000 for a period of one year.
  • The Royal Academy of Engineering programme is known as the Newton Research Collaboration Programme. Awards provide funding at a flat rate of £2,000 per month of exchange visit (up to £24,000 for twelve months total exchange visit/s).
  • The Royal Society programme is known as Newton International Exchanges. Awards last from between three months and up to two years, and up to £12,000 is available dependent upon the length of the visit.
The closing date for applications to the British Academy and Royal Society is 17:00, 22/10/2014. 
The closing date for applications to the Royal Academy of Engineering is 16:00, 24/10/2014. 
For further information, please visit the funder’s websites:
The British Academy – www.britac.ac.uk/newtonfund/
Royal Academy of Engineering – www.raeng.org.uk/NewtonFund/
Royal Society –  https://royalsociety.org/grants/schemes/newton-mobility-grants/

Royal Society International Exchanges Scheme

BU research, Funding opportunities

The Royal Society invites applications for its international exchanges scheme. This offers a flexible platform for UK-based scientists to interact with the best scientists around the world. Funds contribute towards travel, subsistence and research expenses, and can be requested for either a one-off short visit in order to explore opportunities for building lasting networks or for bilateral visits to strengthen emerging collaborations. Activities must be on a subject within the natural sciences, including physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, engineering, agricultural and medical research, and scientific aspects of archaeology, geography and experimental psychology, but excluding social science, and clinical or patient-oriented research.

Applicants must have a PhD or equivalent research experience and hold a permanent or fixed-term contract in an eligible university or research institute for the duration of the project. Collaborations should be based on a single project involving the UK-based scientist and the overseas-based scientist. Collaborations with any country outside the UK are eligible for this scheme.

Applicants may request:

•up to £3,000 for one-off travel lasting up to three months;

•up to £6,000 for multiple visits to be completed within one year, including a maximum of £1,000 for research expenses;

•up to £12,000 for multiple visits to be completed within two years, including a maximum of £2,000 for research expenses.

Closing date: 20 February 2013

For further information, click here.

The RKE Operations team can help you with your application. Please direct any enquiries to RKE Ops in the first instance.

 

Royal Society Mullard Award

Funding opportunities

This award is made to individuals whose work has the potential to make a contribution to national prosperity. 

The Royal Society Mullard Award is made biennially for “an individual who has an outstanding academic record in any area of natural science, engineering or technology and whose work is currently making or has the potential to make a contribution to national prosperity in the United Kingdom”. The award is aimed at early to mid career stage scientists, engineers and technologists.

The award was established following a gift by Mullard Limited. It was first awarded in 1967.  The medal is of silver gilt and is accompanied by a gift of £2,000 and a travel grant of £1,500. The winner is called upon to deliver a lecture at the Society. 

Nominations

The 2013 call for nominations is now open and will close on the Friday 8 February 2013.  To submit a nomination (self-nominations are allowed), please download a nomination form  and send it to innovationgrants@royalsociety.org.

The RKE Operations team can help you with your application. Please direct any enquiries to RKE Ops in the first instance.

 

Royal Society Industry Fellowships

BU research, Funding opportunities

This scheme is for academic scientists who want to work on a collaborative project with industry and for scientists in industry who want to work on a collaborative project with an academic organisation.

It aims to enhance knowledge transfer in science and technology between those in industry and those in academia in the UK.  The scheme provides a basic salary for the researcher and a contribution towards research costs.  The scheme is  funded by the Royal Society, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Natural Environment Research Council, Rolls-Royce plc and BP plc.

Eligibility requirements

The scheme covers all areas of the life and physical sciences, including engineering, but excluding clinical medicine.  The applicant must:

  • have a PhD or be of equivalent standing in their profession
  • hold a permanent post in a university, not-for-profit research organisation or industry in the UK
  • be at a stage in their career when they would particularly benefit from establishing or strengthening personal or corporate links between academia and industry as a foundation for long-term collaboration and development

Applications involving spin-offs or small companies are encouraged. Applicants should clearly state how the fellowship will benefit the not-for-profit research organisation, especially in cases where the applicant has financial involvement within the company. Applicants should also state which complementary skills the employees at the company can offer. 

Applicants should ensure that they meet all the eligibility requirements, which are explained in the scheme notes (PDF).

Value and tenure

The scheme provides the applicant’s basic salary while on secondment. The employing organisation continue to pay national insurance and pension contributions.  Research expenses may be claimed up to the value of £2,000 per year. Awards can be for any period up to two years full-time or a maximum of four years pro rata, i.e. an award could be held at 50% part-time for four years enabling fellows to maintain links with their employing institution more easily.

Application process

Applications are initially assessed by Industry Fellowship panel members and a shortlist is drawn up.  Shortlisted applications are then sent for independent review and are finally considered at a panel meeting, together with their nominated and independent references.

It is expected that applicants will be notified of the outcome of their application 4 months after the closing date of 5th October 2012.

 The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.

Royal Society – University Research Fellowship

BU research, Funding opportunities

This scheme is for outstanding scientists in the UK who are in the early stages of their research career and have the potential to become leaders in their field.

 The scheme provides the opportunity to build an independent research career. Those appointed are expected to be strong candidates for permanent posts in universities at the end of their fellowships.  The scheme covers all areas of the life and physical sciences, including engineering, but excluding clinical medicine and any researcher addressing a direct biomedical research question.

Eligibility requirements
The applicant must:

  • have a PhD (note we will not consider applicants who have just submitted their PhD); be in the early stages of their research career (between 3 to 8 years of research experience since their PhD) by the closing date of the round
  • not hold a permanent post in a university or not-for-profit organization in the European Economic Area (EEA)
  • be a citizen of the EEA or a be a Swiss citizen (or have a relevant connection to the EEA or Switzerland)

The European Economic Area (EEA) consists of the European Union (including the UK) plus Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.

Applicants should ensure that they meet all the eligibility requirements, which are explained in the scheme notes .

Value and tenure
The scheme provides funding to cover the applicant’s salary costs, estates costs and indirect costs. Under the full economic costing model, 80% of these costs will be met by the Royal Society. Research expenses (up to £13,000 for the first year and up to £11,000 annually thereafter) will also be provided.
Initially funding is provided for five years with the opportunity to apply for an extension of three additional years. The University Research Fellowship provides researchers with maximum flexibility and can be held part-time, and allows sabbaticals, secondments or international experience.

The basic salary requested should be at a level commensurate with the applicant’s skills, responsibilities, expertise and experience, up to a maximum of £37,555 per annum.  An annual spine point increase of 3% may be applied to the salary.

No indexation should be applied to the salary, indirect and estates costs; the Society will apply an annual inflationary increase to these budget headings of successful awards.  The level of inflation applied will be determined by HM Treasury’s GDP deflator.  This will be reviewed on an annual basis and the value of awards amended in line with increases or decreases in the GDP deflator.

Application process
Applications are initially reviewed and then shortlisted by members of University Research Fellowship Selection Panels. Applicants are notified if they have reached the shortlisting stage by December.  The shortlisted proposals are reviewed by three independent referees suggested by the panel members and successful applicants are shortlisted for interview. Applicants are informed of the result of this stage in February/March and interviews take place in early to mid April.  The final decision is made at a meeting of the panel Chairs in April, and applicants are notified of the result in early May. 

Please note that interviews for the fellowships are held at the Royal Society. Applicants are asked to keep April free. Only applicants that pass the other stages of assessment will be invited.

 The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.

Royal Society Research Professorship scheme now open!

Funding opportunities

The Royal Society’s Research Professorship scheme is now open for applications! This scheme is for world-class scientists who would benefit from a period of long-term support to allow them to focus on research and collaboration based at an institution in the UK. The scheme provides salary costs, a one-off start-up grant and research expenses. Appointments are usually made for 10 years.

The Professorships may be awarded in any field across the natural sciences. These prestigious posts provide long-term support for internationally recognised scientists of outstanding achievement and promise.

For further information visit the call website: http://royalsociety.org/grants/schemes/research-professorship/ and read the scheme notes: http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/grants/schemes/Research-Professorship.pdf.

The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.

The closing date is 26 June 2012.

Royal Society opens up its journal archive

Publishing

The Royal Society continues to support scientific discovery by allowing free access to more than 250 years of leading research.  Their world-famous journal archive has been opened up and all articles more than 70 years old have been made permanently free to access. 

The Royal Society is the world’s oldest scientific publisher and, as such, their archive is the most comprehensive in science.  It comprises more than 69,000 articles, from the very first published in 
the world’s first peer-reviewed journal Philosophical Transactions to the first article published in the recently launched journal Open Biology.

Thomas Henry Huxley FRS wrote in 1870: ‘If all the books in the world, except the Philosophical Transactions were to be destroyed, it is safe to say that the foundations of physical science would remain unshaken, and that the vast intellectual progress of the last two centuries would be largely, though incompletely, recorded.’

Professor Uta Frith FRS, Chair of the Royal Society library committee, says: ‘The release of these papers opens a fascinating window on the history of scientific progress over the last few centuries and will be of interest to anybody who wants to understand how science has evolved since the days of the Royal Society’s foundation.’

The move to open up their publishing archive is part of the Royal Society’s ongoing commitment to open access in scientific publishing.  It also comes soon after the launch of the Society’s first ever fully open access journal, Open Biology. 

Sharing your research data?

Research news

Would you be prepared to share your data with the wider research community or the general public? 

A report published by the Research Information Network has found that UK data centres, which collect, store and supply research data to academics (such as the National Geoscience Data Centre at the British Geological Survey), have boosted research efficiency and improved a “culture of sharing data”.  However, the report adds that work is needed to encourage researchers to submit more data to the centres.

The Royal Society has an ongoing major policy study that looks at the use of scientific information as it affects scientists and society, “Science As a Public Enterprise”.   In theory raw data should be available for validation and further exploration but issues of quality control, appropriate retention policies, and the utility of storage of vast arrays of ‘raw’ data require urgent attention.  The study is primarily focusing on the exchange of information among scientists and other scientifically literate audiences.  A secondary focus of the study is public engagement with scientific information.

The British Academy response to the project is that all data produced through publicly funded research should be made available, provided confidentiality is protected, so that public policy and debate can be based on the best available evidence.  They suggest that opening up data could also have the advantage of aiding interaction between the arts and sciences.

Internal deadline expanded to include bids to: Royal Society, British Academy and Leverhulme Trust

Research news

At the start of the year ULT agreed to an enforced, mandatory internal deadline of five working days for the submission of Research Council bids via the Je-S system. This has been extremely effective in identifying and correcting errors in applications prior to bid submission, resulting in higher quality applications being submitted.

The University Research and Enterprise Forum (UREF) agreed yesterday to expand the five working days internal deadline to applications made via the E-Gap2 and Leverhulme Online e-submissions systems. This will affect all applications made to the following funding bodies:

  • British Academy
  • Royal Society
  • Leverhulme Trust

To enable BU to seriously compete for future Research Council funding, bids submitted by BU need to be of the highest quality possible. The Research Proposal Review Service (RPRS) has been established to offer advice to improve the quality of bids submitted. The RPRS is there to help you submit the best quality proposal possible – talk to Caroline O’Kane about putting your bid through the RPRS.

The decision from UREF to expand the internal submission deadline to cover these additional funding bodies is to allow sufficient time for the CRE Operations team to undertake the necessary institutional checks and also to provide the opportunity to make any required changes in a more considered, less pressured fashion. Five working days is the internal deadline advised by the Research Councils and other major funding bodies.

Academic staff will continue to be guided through the process and made aware of the internal submission deadlines by the CRE Operations team.

This change will take effect from 1 August 2011.