Restricted Calls (Demand Management)

Call details

UKRI have issued a call for applications to Round 6 of the Future Leaders Fellowship.  This cross-UK Research and Innovation scheme supports early career researchers and innovators with outstanding potential in universities, UK registered businesses, and other research and user environments including research councils' institutes and laboratories.

The support will enable each fellow to tackle ambitious and challenging research and innovation and develop their own careers.

Fellows will benefit from:

• A scheme that is committed to supporting excellent researchers and innovators regardless of their background.  Fellowships can be held on a part-time basis for personal commitments and/or as part of a job share.
• Networking across their cohort of some of the UK’s most talented researchers and innovators from different disciplines and sectors, putting them at the forefront of modern, interdisciplinary research.
• A career boost, including time and investment for training and professional development, providing a route to an open-ended contract for academically hosted fellows (in line with organisational policies and practices).

Eligibility criteria

Future Leaders Fellowships support applicants from diverse career paths.  These fellowships are for early career academics and innovators who are transitioning to or establishing independence. Senior academics and innovators are not permitted to apply. As the FLF aims to enable the fellow to transition to or establish their research/innovation independence, applicants who have already achieved research/innovation independence (e.g. by securing funding aimed at this career stage, or by already managing their own significant programme of work within a business) will not be competitive. There are no eligibility rules based on years since PhD or whether the applicant currently holds a permanent/open-ended academic position or job role.

Further information on eligibility can be found on the UKRI website

University of Edinburgh Internal selection process

There are two stages to this call – the outline proposal stage and the full proposal stage.

All three Colleges will run an internal selection process for the outline proposal stage, with a University-level approach applying to the full application stage.  For your College process at outline proposal stage, please see relevant information below.

Outline Proposal Stage

• Monday 2^nd November 2020 – Colleges to inform ERO of confirmed nominated candidates.  
• 4pm Monday 30^th November 2020 – ERO deadline for final checks on outline proposal.  Applicants please liaise with their Research Funding Specialist at the earliest opportunity; last-minute applications may not be checked, with the risk that the funder may reject the proposal.

School process

The College deadline is 9.00am on 2^nd November 2020. By this time the School should have selected the preferred applicant and confirmed the nomination to College. The College will then inform ERO which applicants have been selected by each School to submit Outline applications to UKRI.

• 16 October 2020 - 4pm: Deadline for Outline proposal emailed to researchorg.geos@ed.ac.uk.  Please use Outline Proposal stage form
• w/c 19 October 2020: School panel to select proposal to go forward and proposers will receive general feedback.
• 30 October 2020 - 4PM Deadline for final Outline proposal to be submitted to researchorg.geos@ed.ac.uk. The application should include a PDF copy of the Outline JeS form, a draft two-page Case for Support, applicant CV and HoS statement (at this stage briefly outlining the suitability to scheme and confirmation of commitments to tapered salary support and open-ended appointment).
• 2 November 2020 (9am deadline): School to confirm to College the details of the preferred applicant, with a reserve applicant if one has been selected.

A reminder of the current scheme objectives and requirements:

• To develop, retain, attract and sustain research and innovation talent in the UK.
• To foster new research and innovation career paths including those at the academic/business and interdisciplinary boundaries, and facilitate movement of people between disciplines, organisations and sectors.
• To provide sustained funding and resources for the best early career researchers and innovators.
• To provide long-term, flexible funding to tackle difficult and novel challenges, and support adventurous, ambitious programmes.
• Significant support from the hosting organisation(s) is expected, including a tapered salary commitment from year 3 leading to an open-ended position during or at the end of the Fellowship.

Prospective applicants should liaise with the School's Research Office and the Research Funding Specialist throughout.

"This call will support Research Software Engineer (RSE) Fellowships for a period of up to five years. The RSE Fellowship describes exceptional individuals with combined expertise in programming and a solid knowledge of the research environment. The Research Software Engineer works with researchers to gain an understanding of the problems they face, and then develops, maintains and extends software to provide the answers." Visit the funder website for more info here.

School Process: 

13 July 2020 4PM - Deadline for Expressions of interest. Candidates must contact GeoSciences Research Organisation on researchorg.geos@ed.ac.uk to register interest. 

20 July 2020 4PM - Deadline for Outline applications. The application should include: Outline case for support, CV, Justification of resources requested  and School/Centre outline statement of support (at this stage we can accept a few paragraphs or bullet points covering what has already been discussed with the Head of School) in the format requested by College, as shown below.

Please submit your Outline application to GeoSciences Research Organisation on researchorg.geos@ed.ac.uk

w/c 20 July 2020 - School panel to decide applications to be submitted for College competition. Results fed back to applicants.

College Process: 

“The Research Software Engineer (RSE) Fellowships call is to provide support for RSE Fellows for a period of up to five years. An RSE Fellowship is a personal award for future leaders who possess expertise in software development with a solid knowledge of their research environment. Research Software Engineers are crucial members of computational research teams who ensure they have the critical skills required to develop, support and evolve software to tackle the research challenges they face. As well as having expertise in computational software development and engineering, an RSE Fellow should be an ambassador and have the potential to be a future leader in the research software community. RSE Fellows should promote the widespread use of computation and software best practice to enhance research and further develop sustainable RSE career pathways.”

The University is allowed to submit only two applications to this call, so an internal selection process will be conducted by the College to select the two strongest candidates to go forward. Given the focus of Software Engineering, it is expected that the most likely Centre from which applications will arise is Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre (EPCC), and that the main Schools from which further applications are likely to originate are Engineering and Informatics, but all candidates who meet the criteria and have School support can apply through their School. Given the restriction on application numbers, we ask that Schools and EPCC conduct an internal review process, mindful of inclusivity and diversity, so that they can put forward up to two identified candidates for College consideration.  (Three candidates may be submitted by a particular School/Centre if the field were felt to be particularly strong, but in this rare event we would expect an indicative School ranking and brief justification).  This call is also advertised through the Deans of Research across the other two Colleges, with an invitation to submit through CSE to the internal selection process an outline proposal from any School/Centre/Institute which fits these EPSRC call criteria.

The role of the RSE Fellow is expected to be fully integrated and supported by their Host Institution. As such, an application to this call will require an institutional statement of support, with the Host expected to provide support and development opportunities during the Fellowship and a solid foundation for career prospects beyond the term of the grant. The statement should be unique and highly tailored to the individual applicant. Generic or non-specific statements are strongly discouraged. Candidates will therefore be expected to have spoken to their School (Director of Research and/or Head of School for Schools, Mark Parsons as Director for EPCC) to ensure the required School/EPCC support has been obtained for this aspect of their application prior to submission. 

Selection will be based on, and potential candidates are therefore asked to produce, an outline application, which should include the following information:

• Outline Case for Support (up to four sides of A4)

  • A brief summary of your career to date;
  • A brief explanation of why you feel the RSE Fellowship is appropriate for you and how it will develop your career;
  • A brief description of the work you plan to undertake during your Fellowship to include:
    • the aims and objectives of your proposal;
    • a project summary; 
    • details of any work packages you propose to include in your proposal;
    • outcomes from your Fellowship; and
    • how your proposal fits to EPSRC or STFC strategic priorities.
  • A brief explanation of the area of research software engineering you will work in, including the research area(s) or institutions you will support, and their importance;
  • A brief explanation of the communities/research groups that will benefit from the work of your Fellowship; and
  • A brief explanation about how you demonstrate leadership potential and how you will become an ambassador for the Research Software Engineer role.

• CV (up to two sides of A4).

• Justification of the resources requested (up to two sides of A4).

• School/Centre outline statement of support. This will be required for the College selection process, and can take the form of a short statement or bullet point list outlining the support to be committed to the fellow (if successful).

EPSRC Research Software Engineering Fellowships 2020 (196.72 KB PDF)

In order to conduct the College selection process (and to give the successful candidates enough time to review and improve their outline applications before the 18 August 2020 deadline) we ask that each School and EPCC please ensure that their internal review process is completed and the maximum of two supported applications (or three with suitable justification and ranking) are sent to Katherine Quinn (katherine.quinn@ed.ac.uk) by no later than 9am on Tuesday 28 July 2020.

If you are interested in applying  to the next round (January 2021), please contact the School Research Organisation on researchorg.geos@ed.ac.uk to register your interest. 

Standard Grants 

"UKRI recognises that the current situation may present additional challenges to those intending to apply. To help with that, the deadlines on all open funding opportunities will be extended to give applicants more time to submit their applications. The deadline for call has been extended by two weeks to 28 July 2020.

Applicants and Research Organisations should also note that the normal expectation for a 50% contribution to any equipment costs (over £10k) by the Research Organisation is not required for this call and NERC will pay 100% of any justified equipment costs. The funding limit of £800k at 100% FEC still applies. This change will apply to this round and future Discovery Science calls until further notice (DS Standard grants, Large grants and Pushing the Frontiers call). The grants handbook still reflects the 50% contribution but will be updated in due course." More info...

As you may be aware due to collective efforts in internal grant development and selection across CSE, the average institutional success rate has risen to 29% over the last 6 rounds, and so we have emerged from Demand Management.  Although we will therefore not have a formal quota imposed for the July 2020/January 2021 rounds. Therefore, in order to at least maintain our current success rate the University has now set an expectation to submit the same number (7 applications) to the July 2020 round. As in previous rounds there are two quota earning Schools based on application and award history over the previous three years and so their initial quota allocation continues to be 2 applications from GeoSciences and 2 applications from Biological Sciences with the opportunity for up to three further applications to be submitted from any School for consideration at the College selection panel, where selection will solely be on research excellence. 

Details of the next call for the NERC Discovery Science,  Standard Research Grants (including New Investigator Grants) are below: 

The next deadline is 16:00 on 14 January 2020. The University Research Office organises the final JeS submission procedures, and we are subject to arrangements by the College for competition for the allocation of spare places outside of school automatic allocations.  

Timeline

• 20 April 2020 (4pm deadline): Submission of Expressions of Interest emailed to researchorg.geos@ed.ac.uk   Please use the following form: 

  NERC Standard Grant - Expression of Interest (37.5 KB Word)

• w/c 27 April 2020: Panel select expressions to go forward and proposers will receive general feedback. 

• 5 June 2020 (4pm deadline): Submission of full proposal (case for support, financial information, etc) submitted for internal review;  At this stage, it is extremely important to submit a full proposal, including JeS forms, all costings and justification of resourcers, in a form that is as strong as possible.  The quality of the actual proposal as submitted will be the main criterion for deciding which of those selected at the outline round go forward to our quota, and which to the College ‘reallocation’ round. There will still be time to adjust proposals at this stage based on the feedback received.  

• w/c 8 June 2020: Internal panel to review, rank proposals and provide feedback.  Panel to select those full proposals to be considered in the between-School competition

• 19 June 2020 (4pm deadline): Schools to submit to College those full proposals they wish to be considered in the between-School competition

• By 3 July 2020: CSE panel meeting chaired by CSE Dean of Research to decide which proposals to submit to NERC from the between-School competition. Results fed back to proposers. 

• 23 July 2020 (4pm deadline): submission of full proposal to the Je-S submitter pool for review by Edinburgh Research Office. 

• 28 July 2020 (4pm deadline): final submission to NERC. Note that final responsibility for submission of the agreed proposals lies with host Schools, supported by ERO. 

Please remember to liaise with Brendan Martin (brendan.martin@ed.ac.uk) for costings and with Simon Harley (Simon.Harley@ed.ac.uk) for facilities as early as possible. 

Research Data Management:  If you need help with writing a Data Management Plan please see the University’s Research Data Service website for information and assistance:  http://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/research-support/research-data-service    

Pushing the Frontiers

"UKRI recognises that the current situation may present additional challenges to those intending to apply. To help with that, the deadlines on all open funding opportunities will be extended to give applicants more time to submit their applications. The deadline for this call has been extended by two weeks to 21 July 2020.

The Announcement of Opportunity has been updated to share that the normal expectation for a 50% contribution to any equipment costs (over £10k) by the Research Organisation is not required and NERC will pay 100% of any justified equipment costs." More info...

NERC invites proposals for a new pilot call. The Pushing the Frontiers pilot will support the very best individual researchers to push the frontiers of knowledge with ground-breaking, risky, innovative scientific discovery. This scheme structure encourages applications from early career researchers (ECR). Applicants can apply as an ECR if at the closing date of the call, they are in post less than 5 years from the start of their first permanent position.

There is no necessity to submit to the scheme, the University will choose, within its internal demand management allocation, to submit only to the conventional Standard Grant call, which will be running concurrently or to both. Applications to this pilot will count in the internal demand management calculation (in addition to applications submitted to the July 2020 Standard Grant round).

Timetable   

The next call closing date is 16:00 on 7 July 2020. The University Research Office organises the final JeS submission procedures, and we are subject to arrangements by the College for competing for the allocation of places.  

•   20 April 2020 (deadline 4pm): Submission of application. Documents should be emailed to  researchorg.geos@ed.ac.uk  Please use the following form: 

  NERC - Pushing the Frontiers - Application form (36.78 KB Word)

• w/c 27 April 2020: Internal panel select the proposals to go forward and proposers will receive general feedback. 

• 29 May 2020 (4pm deadline): Schools to submit outline application details for one (or up to two if an ECR is included)  applications for consideration to College. Selection and feedback will then be given to inform further case development ahead of the CSE Panel meeting.    

• 19 June 2020 (4pm deadline): Selected candidates to submit updated documents to College.   

• By 3 July 2020: CSE panel meeting chaired by CSE Dean of Research to decide which proposals to submit to NERC from the between-School competition. Results fed back to proposers. 

• 16 July 2020 (4pm deadline): submission of full proposal to the Je-S submitter pool for review by Edinburgh Research Office. 

• 21 July 2020 (4pm deadline): final submission to NERC. Note that final responsibility for submission of the agreed proposals lies with host Schools, supported by ERO. 

Turing AI Acceleration Fellowships are intended to accelerate the careers of high potential researchers towards a world leading position by the end of their fellowship. Strong emphases within this programme are on creativity of ideas, thought and approach to tackle the grand challenges of AI, and on enabling career mobility across sectors (including academia, industry, government, and the third sector) for the fellow and their team. This will aid in the creation of new, flexible collaborations and enable the two-way flow of knowledge and people across sectors. Fellows are expected to take full advantage of this though the inclusion of significant tangible stakeholder engagement in order to build mutually beneficial two-way relationships based on expertise, secondments, products and infrastructures.

There are some important things to note about this scheme.

• There is an expectation that these fellowship applications should show significant and tangible support from relevant stakeholders in the research area.
• The surrounding support for the fellowship will be looked at during this internal sift to help decide which candidates the University will select to go to full proposal stage. Given this and the early 2020 deadline with the Christmas closure in the middle, any interested applicants need to have detailed discussions with the school as early as possible about the sort of support they think they will need. Applicants are also recommended to consider non-financial support to bolster evidence for career development like securing an independent mentor or promising to take part in named professional development schemes. Applicants may wish to explore this with IAD https://www.ed.ac.uk/institute-academic-development.

As with other applications, working out the costs and resources for your proposal can be done by consulting the school’s research grants team in advance. They will need to approve any financial costings & calculations anyway before submission. 

Internal deadline

There is an early deadline of 4.30pm on 17^th January 2020 by which you should submit your completed proposal to the Head of School by email to Carol.Gourlay@ed.ac.uk. This is so that the Head of School supporting statement can be written, signed, and returned in good time before the final deadline of the 24th. Please ensure you have had your application and any promises from the school or university discussed and approved before you send your proposal to Carol so that the letter can back-up what is being said elsewhere in your form.

At the point of submission it is up to applicants to submit their own paperwork to rosanna.maccagnano@ed.ac.uk, but please also copy researchorg.geos@ed.ac.uk so we can keep track of any applications from our school.

College process

Institutions may only submit four applications to the first, outline, stage. The funder’s deadline for stage 1 applications is 18 February 2020.  The University will therefore hold the following internal selection process:

 24 January 2020 – Internal UoE deadline for outline applications and Head of School/Institute Letter of Support.  Submit to Rosie Maccagnano, UK Research Funding Manager, rosanna.maccagnano@ed.ac.uk

Please use this form

A selection panel will choose the 4 applications to be submitted, with results (and feedback) communicated to applicants by 3 February 2020. 

18 February 2020 – Deadline for submission of the selected stage 1 applications.

Full details of the call, including eligibility criteria and application guidance, may be found on the UKRI website: https://www.ukri.org/funding/funding-opportunities/turing-artificial-intelligence-acceleration-fellowships/

Please note, from the call guidance, the following expectations on the host organisation:

• The host organisation is expected to lend significant support to fellows in order to enable them to build their profile, research activity and career.
• The host organisation is expected to actively enable flexible fellowship pathways including secondments and collaboration building with cross-sector stakeholders, and to invest in developing the career and leadership skills of the fellow.
• In addition, host organisations will be required to facilitate a cohort approach for the fellows adding value in terms of networking, good practice sharing, mentoring, advocacy and stakeholder engagement. All successful applicants will be expected to engage in this. 
• The Host Organisation Statement at both stages of this call are an important feature of this award which should draw on the discussions between the applicant and head of department.

If you have any questions please get in touch on researchorg.geos@ed.ac.uk