NESTA’s new Social Innovation Fund

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Holly Hoar

The Centre for Social Action Innovation Fund is a £14 million Fund to support the growth of innovations that mobilise people’s energy and talents to help each other, working alongside public services. This fund is an open call and will be here for two years, so even if you don’t have a project now, make a note of it for future reference.

Funding Body: NESTA

Fund: The Centre for Social Innovation Fund

Overview: As part of the Cabinet Office Centre for Social Action, Nesta will run a £14 million Innovation Fund.

We will provide financial and non-financial support to help grow the impact and reach of innovations that mobilise people’s energy and talents to help each other, working alongside public services.

Over the next two years the ambition is to:

Find innovations that harness different types of social action to make a positive difference across a range of outcomes

Support the most promising innovations to have more impact, including building evidence of what works

Enable a small number of proven innovations to achieve impact at significant scale, by reaching and benefiting many more people

The Innovation Fund will focus on a small number of big social challenges, like helping older people to age well or supporting young people to get into work, where there is a plausible account of how social action can make a difference and is under-exploited by the existing approach of public services.

Current priorities

Helping people to age well, particularly by supporting people over 50 to have a purpose, a sense of well-being and to be connected to others
Enabling people with long-term health conditions to have a better quality of life, particularly through the use of peer to peer networks and groups
Supporting and encouraging young people to succeed and find employment, for example through mentoring, coaching, and peer-to-peer networks

Using new approaches to “impact volunteering” to mobilise volunteers to increase and enhance the outcomes achieved by public services

Budget: £50,000 to £500,000 to individual ventures or programmes, funding usually needs to be matched from other sources.

Deadlines: Open call, just fill in an expression of interest form on the website

Website: http://bit.ly/12ZByAs

Sport Based European Funding

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Holly Hoar

Before the Erasmus for All Sports funding starts in 2014, it seems the European Commission wants to run test projects. This is open for bids until 19 July.

Funding body: European Commission
Scheme: 2013 Preparatory Action: European Partnership on Sports
Overview: This call for proposals will support transnational projects put forward by public bodies or not-for-profit organisations in order to identify and test suitable networks and good practices in the field of sport, in three following areas:
(1) Strengthening of good governance and dual careers in sport through support for the mobility of volunteers, coaches, managers and staff of non-profit sport organisations.
(2) Protecting athletes, especially the youngest, from health and safety hazards by improving training and competition conditions.
(3) Promoting traditional European sports and games.
Projects must include at least five member states.
They expect to fund around 15 projects
Deadlines: 19 July 2013
Costs: The EU covers 80% of all eligible costs. There is no minimum or maximum amount to apply for, but projects are likely to be over €400,000

This type of project takes a large amount of work to develop. If there is not already a project idea and some partners in place, the team wouldn’t recommend applying for this round of funding. However, it is possible to identify organisations submitting bids with a view to being a project partner. A similar grant should be available in 2014 so this could provide the starting point to developing a bid for 2014.

MQ: Transforming Mental Health fellowships

Posted on May 2, 2013 by BENNETT Margaret

MQ: Transforming Mental Health invites applications for its fellow awards. MQ is seeking talented researchers with bold ideas who aspire to be the next generation of research leaders in mental health. With this new Programme, they aim to support the most promising early career scientists and clinicians who are asking the difficult and challenging questions that will contribute to transformative advances in mental health research.

The programme is open to researchers from all sciences and the proposed research must address a question relevant to mental health.

In supporting researchers at an early stage of their career, MQ aims to build and ensure capacity in academic research in mental health for the future. Awardees will join the community of MQ supporters and friends championing research progress across all sectors of mental health research.

The Programme will provide £75,000 (or $110,000 or €85,000) per year for up to three years.

The award may be used as start-up funding for a specific project or as bridging funding for a current project. Funds may be used for salary support and/or direct research costs. Salary support may be either for the applicant themselves, or for research assistance staff as appropriate. Please see Guidelines for Applicants for more information on how funding may be used and other currencies.

These awards are open to individuals from any country.

Applicants must be early career researchers with a PhD, MD or equivalent, who have recently established their own independent research career or are about to become independent. The Programme is open to basic scientists, clinically qualified researchers (such as medical graduates and clinical psychologists) and social science researchers. Please see FAQs on Eligibility and Suitability for more information on Applicant selection.

Research can be based in the laboratory, clinic or field, and may involve experimental or theoretical approaches, but must be relevant to the cause, treatment or prevention of mental illness.

Applications for this Programme are to be considered annually. MQ anticipates making up to four awards in 2013.

Application deadline: 10 June 2013

http://joinmq.org/research-programme/the-mq-fellows-programme/

Sharing Knowledge with Industry, Businesses and Universities

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Holly Hoar

This European pilot project is about sharing learning with students, HEI’s (including staff), business and industry, plus social and economic renewal. This fund is currently a one off. There is no supporting conference or partner search tool to go with it.

Funder: Directorate-General for Education and Culture, EU

Grant Title: Pilot projects for the development of knowledge partnerships and knowledge alliances

Fund Description: Projects should strengthen the role of higher education institutions as instruments of innovation and increase the employability, creativity and innovative potential of graduates, professors and company staff. Funding supports new learning and teaching methods, fostering entrepreneurial skills and attitudes and structured mobility. Higher education institutions, research institutes, training institutes and public and private large, medium or small companies, intermediaries and associations and national or regional organisations based in EU member states, may apply. Each partnership must include at least three different independent partners, established in a minimum of three different member states. Partnerships must include at least one higher education institution and one private company. Approximately three projects will be funded.

Amount Available: The budget for this call is €1 million. Grants are worth between €200,000 and €400,000 each and funding covers a maximum of 75 per cent of eligible costs over 12 to 18 months

Deadline: 28 June 2013

Website: http://ec.europa.eu/education/calls/s0312_en.htm

This page provides a quick overview of the call objectives and the concept

http://ec.europa.eu/education/calls/0312/objectives_en.pdf

Anyone interested in bidding for this fund should let the External Projects Team know as we can support with the application process. Our team are very experienced in submitting European bids so we can smooth the way through EU jargon and budgets.

The EU is looking for cover the following aims

COST: European Cooperation in Science and Technology

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Josephine Beech

The next deadline for the submission of preliminary proposals to the COST Open Call is 27 September 2013.

Developing stronger links among European researchers is crucial to building the European Research Area (ERA). COST stimulates new, innovative, interdisciplinary and broad research networks in Europe and although it does not fund research itself, it does support networking activities. Proposals for COST actions should contribute to the scientific, technological, economic, cultural or societal development of Europe. Proposals for COST Actions can be submitted to one of nine Domains, including Food and Agriculture, and Earth System Science and Environmental Management, or when highly interdisciplinary and spanning several COST Domains, as Trans-Domain Proposals.

For more information on COST please click here

If you are interested in this opportunity, please get in touch with the external proejcts team at externalprojects@staffs.ac.uk

NIHR – Board and Panel Members Sought

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Josephine Beech

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Board and Panel vacancies

We have a number of vacancies for funding board members, panel members and panel chairs for the following health research programmes

• Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME) Programme
• NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research (HS&DR) Programme
• NIHR Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme

Applications are welcomed from people with a wide range of expertise, including clinical staff, service managers, health and public health professionals, subject experts and academics.

For further information and how to apply, please visit our vacancies page.
The closing date for applications is 1pm on 07 June 2013.

EU Prize for Women Innovators

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Esther KNIGHT

The European Commission has launched the second edition of the EU Women Innovators Prize to reward three women who have achieved outstanding innovations and brought them to market. The Prize aims to raise awareness of the need for more female entrepreneurs and to inspire other women to follow in their footsteps.

The contest is open to all women who have founded or co-founded their company and who have at some point in their careers benefitted from the EU’s research Framework Programmes (FP) or the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme (CIP).

Three prizes will be awarded in total:

First prize: EUR 100,000;
Second prize: EUR 50,000; and
Third prize: EUR 25,000

An independent panel of judges from business and academia will examine and select the three winners who will be announced in spring 2014. Full details of the eligibility and evaluation criteria are available through the competition website, which is indicated below.

The deadline for applications is 15 October 2013.

The winners of the previous edition of the Prize were:

Dr. Gitte Neubauer (Co-founder and Vice-President for Research Operations of CELLZOME – recently acquired by GlaxoSmithKline) whose groundbreaking research into chemo-proteomics is driving her company’s work on new, better targeted drugs against inflammatory diseases and cancer;
Fabienne Hermitte (Co-founder IPSOGEN, Senior director, Research and Development – Regulatory Affairs) whose work made her company a pioneer in personalised healthcare diagnostics, which allow more individualised treatments for cancer patients; and
Ilaria Rosso (Co-founder ELECTRO POWER SYSTEMS, Vice- President of IP Policy and Public Funding Programmes) whose company developed the first self-recharging hydrogen fuel cell system for backup power – a clean, renewable alternative to lead-acid batteries and diesel generators.

The following conditions need to be fulfilled:

The contestant must be a woman.
The contestant must be a resident of an EU Member State or a Countries Associated to the Research Framework Programmes
The contestant must be the founder or co-founder of an existing and active company.
The company has been registered before 1 January 2011.
The annual turnover of the company was at least EUR 0.10 million in 2011 or 2012.
Either the contestant as a natural person or the company founded/co-founded by the contestant have received or is receiving funding from the European Union or the European Atomic Energy Community Research Framework Programme, or from the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP).

Full details:

http://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/index_en.cfm?section=women-innovators

UK-China travel grants

Posted on April 22, 2013 by ejd2

Travel grants of £1500-£2000 are available for travel to China for specific research, conferencing or lecturing reasons from the Universities’ China Committee in London (UCCL). The grants are for post graduate or research degree students. Return visits from China can also be supported. Further information is available at http://www.gbcc.org.uk/universities-china-committee-in-london-uccl.aspx. Please contact externalprojects@staffs.ac.uk if you require help. The deadline is 1st June 2013.

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