What is the Research Funding Competition?
The funding call for the research funding competition 2019/20 has now been launched.
The funding initiative will be distributed by the Research and Innovation Office using a competitive process to support research initiatives which respond to the University’s vision and mission as outlined in Strategy 2020. The initiative is intended to replicate external processes for funding and be an opportunity to gain experience securing funding in a competitive environment, including peer review and feedback.
The scheme is intended to be flexible and will support a variety of research projects including funding to support ECRs in pump priming their research, funding to support preparing grant applications or 4* papers, creating impact from research or other initiatives to achieve the University research objectives. Please note: The Research Funding competition 2019/20 will take a similar format to a Charity funder, therefore, no Directly Allocated (DA) staff costs, estates, or indirects are to be included.
Any staff on a research or academic contract can apply for funding. Early Career Researchers are encouraged to apply. Professors can only apply for Impact grants of existing research that will be going forward for a REF Impact Case Study. Professors may be co-applicants to support ECRs research.
(Note: We do not expect staff successful in previous year’s internal funding competitions to repeatedly apply, however we will consider applications in exceptional circumstances conditional on the applicant having submitted final reports where the aims and objectives were achieved for any previous project and where they have applied for external funding in the interim to continue support of their research. Repeat applications could for example, be requested to enhance impact from previous research projects or to initiate a new research area leading towards external funding.)
The competition is launched in March of 2018/2019 to ensure that all the applications are reviewed and successful candidates notified in time to start research projects by the beginning of the new academic year, 2019/20.
Examples of activity supported by the funding
| Directly Incurred Staff | Research Assistant for a specific research project OR Intern (an undergraduate or masters’ student) to assist with lab/field work, data gathering/data entry, data analysis and interpretation or output preparation across the year or during the summer. |
| Purchase or hire of equipment/consumables | E.g. specialised equipment/materials/consumables/small capital items, which are critical to delivering an existing or future project. The emphasis here is on small equipment requests for the reason that separate capital funding is available to the University and should be under the procurement threshold of £2,000. Please note that all equipment purchase must meet University procurement guidelines, including IT procurement. |
| Travel and Subsistence | Extended visit to research facility or field station elsewhere in the UK or overseas to conduct/observe research or participate in joint research e.g. preliminary scoping visit ahead of applying for collaborative EU project funding. Applications could also be to fund travel to a conference either to present a paper or a poster OR to attend a conference the theme of which would enhance work in your area of expertise (reasons why the School cannot support this activity should be provided by the Director of Research). |
| Other | Fees-only MSc by Research studentships will be eligible where an excellent student has been identified. |
How can I apply?
Applications MUST be prepared on Worktribe, including costings, ethics, benefits, Worktribe CV and a Case for Support.
If you wish to apply, an intention to submit a bid will have to be made by 5pm on Tuesday 16th April 2019. This will be done by creating a new project in Worktribe and there by notifying your school research and innovation manager your intention to respond to the funding call. Applications created after this date will NOT be accepted.
The deadline for final applications to be submitted on Worktribe is by 5pm on Monday 13th May 2019. Successful candidates will be announced in the week commencing 26th August 2019.
Full information on the competition including guidelines, application guidance, case for support template can be found on the staff intranet here: https://staff.napier.ac.uk/services/research-innovation-office/external-funding/Pages/Internal-Research-Funding.aspx
Timeline:
| Competition opens for applications | Monday 25th March 2019 |
| Deadline for Intention to Submit, i.e. project created in Worktribe | Tuesday 16th April 2019 |
| Application Deadline | Monday 13th May 2019 |
| Successful Applicants will be notified | w/c 26th August 2019 |
| Carry out research project initiatives | 2nd September 2019 – 31st July 2020 |
For further questions please contact the competition administrator, Alisdair Stapley at a.stapley@napier.ac.uk.