The Director's Fund

The 2024 Director’s Fund Call has a total value of £200,000. Individual awards will range between £20,000 and £100,000 and we expect projects to typically last 6 to 18 months. Successful applications will be funded at 80% of FEC (100% of FEC for work done at the MLC).

All funded projects need to be aligned with the Network’s ongoing activities and could be:

  1. Projects proposed by Network Associates related to cluster research
  2. Inter cluster projects suggested by a Network member
  3. Technology priming projects that support the Network or a specific Cluster
  4. Projects that aim to use the new models developed by the Network
  5. Projects that offer to bring in specific knowledge or contributions to the Network

You can read about projects funded from the previous Director’s Fund Call on our Projects page.

The focus of our second funding call will be projects led by Associates or by ECRs within the Network. All applications should be led by an Associate or an ECR. A Network PI can be listed as a Co-I, but we will not fund senior investigators’ time and related indirect costs for Network PIs.

The application deadline is 15th April.

We expect proposals to include a selection of the following costs: ECR staff costs, technician staff costs, travel, animal/breeding costs (at the MLC or own institute), sample shipping costs, computing costs (for data projects), consumables, analysis costs (e.g. microscopy, flow cytometry, mass spec, histology), estates and other directly allocated costs, indirect costs.

Applications should include information about whether there is other funding that can contribute to the proposed project, an explanation of how the proposed project fits with a specific Cluster or the overall Network, and information about the long-term impact of the proposed project.

Applications will be assessed on relevance and value to the Network, feasibility, potential for significant outputs and scientific strength.

You can find the full set of questions that you’re required to answer in your application in this word document that you can use to draft your application before submitting it below:

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