Research awards
Gates Foundation Grand Challenges Exploration: Deadline 7 November. £100 000 is available to fund development of an idea that can help solve one of the Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenges. If you have an idea to do with agricultural development or medicinal plants, take a look at this. It is a short application, which requires no prior data – worth a try for a project too risky to pitch to a different funding body!
FP7 KBBE: Deadline 5 February. See previous blog posts (1, 2) on this call.
BBSRC Responsive Mode: Deadline 9 January. The bread and butter of plant science research. Remember to apply to Committee C if your work is to do with ‘genes or development,’ as its remit has changed. There will be a plant scientist sitting on it. Committee B remains the main route for plants and microbes.
BBSRC LINK and BBSRC Industrial Partnership Awards: Deadline 9 January. Funding available for collaboration between a research group and industrial partner, who must fund at least 50% of the total economic cost of the project for a LINK award, or 10% for an IPA.
ERC Synergy Grant: Deadline 10 January. Up to €15 000 000 is available for a project lasting up to six years. Groups of between 2 and 4 PIs and their groups can apply for this huge grant. This is part of the FP7 Ideas Work Programme and proposals must comply with their priorities. According to the Guide for Applicants, ‘The aim is to promote substantial advances in the frontiers of knowledge, and to encourage new productive lines of enquiry … methods and techniques, including unconventional approaches and investigations at the interface between established disciplines.’
Grants for travel, workshops, or collaborations
ERASynBio Twinning Programme: Deadline 3 December. Up to €5000 is available for travel to facilitate the beginnings of a synthetic biology collaboration. The grant aims to enable the collaborators to start up a joint research programme or to write a joint proposal – this is not a long term project, and must be finished within 6 months of the start date. The application form is very short.
UK-US Fulbright Commission: Deadline: 15 November. Awards are available for postgraduate students or researchers to go to an American University for research, study, or teaching. Students may be at a disadvantage if they have missed the Open Days in September and October.
Other competitions
BBSRC Activating Impact: Deadline: 14 November. £50 000 is available to BBSRC grant-holding organisations who can demonstrate how they have made an essential contribution to enable intellectual assets from BBSRC sponsored research to progress toward the delivery of public benefit and impact.
BBSRC Innovator of the Year: Deadline 14 November. Nominate an individual researcher or a small team to win up to £10 000 award, which is to reward those who have ‘harnessed the potential of their excellent research.’ £15 000 will be given to the winner’s department.
BBSRC Excellence with Impact: Expression of interest deadline 31 January. Two £500 000 prizes are available to research organisations that can ‘develop and successfully deliver a vision for maximising impact, alongside a relevant institution-wide culture change.’
New Phytologist Tansley Medal: Deadline 15 December. The prize is £2000, and will be awarded to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to plant science research. The winner will also author a minireview for New Phytologist.
Details of the following grants can be found my previous funding round-up:
Royal Society Brian Mercer Feasibility Award: Rolling bias.
Technology Strategy Board Synthetic Biology competition: Deadline for registration 14 November; deadline for submission 21 November.
Biochemical Society Eric Reid Fund for Methodology: Deadline 1 November.
Agricultural Economics Society Prize Essay Competition: Deadline 30 November.
BBSRC International Workshops: Deadline 14 November.
BBSRC Partnering Awards: Deadline 14 November.
Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowships: Deadline 8 November.