Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Wellcome Trust: Pilot funding for cross-disciplinary research connecting environment, nutrition and health


The deadline for concept notes is 27 August 2013

 Small awards in the order of £250 000 (exceptionally up to £500 000) for up to two years

Aims of the awards

  • These small awards are designed to open up research avenues that will ultimately lead to work with a significant impact on human health. Pilot projects may address any aspect of the interplay between health, environment and nutrition, but a focus on health is key. Projects are not required to cover issues related to both environment and nutrition.
  • Our scoping work highlighted the explosion of data in the public and private domains, and the importance of harnessing its value for society. In recognition of this, we would particularly like to see proposals with the potential to unlock the power of data by making it more relevant, available, accessible and useful (e.g. by formatting to permit inter-linkage). The size of these awards makes them well suited to projects that exploit existing datasets or pilot novel approaches to data collection and exploration.
  • Projects outside of this theme, but relevant to the Sustaining Health area in other ways, are also welcomed.
We expect these awards to stimulate collaborations and build capacity for interdisciplinary research. We believe that high-quality research in this area requires the development of new interdisciplinary and cross-sector partnerships, particularly between biomedical (including public health) researchers and those working in social, economic, environmental, climate, agricultural, development and computer sciences.

Eligibility
We welcome proposals from a broad range of disciplines and we particularly encourage applications from cross-sector collaborations, involving academic organisations, industry/business, non-governmental organisations and/or government agencies based in the UK and overseas.
Participating organisations may be located in any country, and the principal investigator may be employed in any sector.

  • Institutions

Not-for-profit research institutions in the UK that are able to sign up to Wellcome Trust Grant Conditions are eligible to apply; this includes those funded by the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK or the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. Institutions in other countries should contact us to confirm their eligibility.

  • Companies

Commercial companies are eligible to apply, either as principal applicants or as collaborators. We fund commercial companies to meet our charitable objectives through programme-related investment (PRI). For further details, please seeour policy on PRI [Word 23KB]. Companies will normally be expected to sign up to specific terms relating to the scheme.
All applications will require clear arrangements for leadership and management of the project, whether this involves a single institution or consortium.

Application Process
You should complete a concept note [Word 79KB] and send it to sustaininghealth@wellcome.ac.uk. We encourage you to discuss the suitability of your proposal with us before you send your concept note.
We will review concept notes as we receive them. If we decide to invite a preliminary application, we will email you a preliminary application form by the end of August 2013. From this stage onwards, the process is by invitation only. Uninvited applications will not be considered.
If your preliminary application is shortlisted, we will invite you to submit a full application, which will be subject to international peer review.

Assessment criteria

Applications will be assessed using the following criteria:
  • importance and relevance of proposed research questions
  • track record of the applicants and co-applicants and their ability to deliver high-quality research
  • collaborative nature of proposed project and demonstrable ability to bring together multiple disciplines
  • potential to build multidisciplinary research capacity
  • regional and national and international context of the application (as appropriate)
  • plans for data management and sharing
  • potential for attracting additional, longer-term support.

Application advice

Wellcome Trust staff are happy to advise you during the preparation of a proposal.
If it is adequately justified, modest equipment purchase and maintenance costs may be included in an application. Building or refurbishment expenditure will not normally be considered.
Applications may not include requests for academic institutional overheads.
Find out more about allowed costs and disallowed costs.
The most common application queries are addressed by our FAQs.

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