Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome
Trust recently issued their Strategic Plan
2010 – 2020. As part of this plan, they have abolished the following
traditional schemes: project grants, programme grants, equipment grants,
biomedical resources grants, technology development grants, university awards
and flexible travel awards. These
have all been replaced with the Investigator
Award scheme which is divided into New
Investigator Awards and Senior
Investigator Awards.
This scheme is part of the Wellcome Trust's biomedical science funding area which focuses on investigating health and disease in humans and animals.
Applications are submitted in a rolling basis.
Key changes
- Award schemes will fund between
one to seven years and will be in the range of £100k to £425k per year.
- Applicants must be employed by
the institution on a permanent, open ended or long-term rolling contract.
- The host institution must
provide a letter of commitment in support of the application and should be
from the most senior authority in the faculty, school or division.
- The Main Application form will
be significantly shorter than in previous schemes and the Trust does not
expect detailed costing at this stage. Costs are expected to be rounded to
the nearest hundred thousand pounds at main application stage.
- The Scientific Review and
shortlisting will be performed by the Trust’s own Expert Review Groups and
not by peer review as has been done in the past. The External Peer Review
will only take place once it has been shortlisted by these Groups. Applicants will then be invited for
interview.
- Applicants will not be allowed
to re-apply for a period of 12 months for New Investigator Awards or 2
years for Senior Investigator Awards.
Internal Process Changes
- The Letter of Commitment from Cambridge should be
signed by either the Head of the School or the Pro Vice Chancellor for
Research. The Trust has indicated that a generic letter will not be
acceptable to them.
- Costings at Main Application
submission stage will be expected to be at a high level, with detailed
costs only requested at award stage. The Research Operations Office recommend that
departments continue to use pFact in establishing costs, however the
Research Operations Office will only check costs in detail at Award stage.
Further details
