Open Funding Calls

UKRI open call for research and innovation ideas to address COVID-19

Proposals are invited for short term projects addressing and mitigating the health, social, economic and environmental impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak.

There is no closing date – proposals can be submitted at any time.

UKRI will support excellent proposals of up to 18 months duration which meet at least one of the following:

• New research or innovation with a clear impact pathway that has the potential (within the period of the award) to deliver a significant contribution to the understanding of, and response to, the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts.
• Supports the manufacture and/or wide scale adoption of an intervention with significant potential
• Gathers critical data and resources quickly for future research use

Proposals will be accepted from anyone who is normally eligible to apply for UKRI funding. Proposals should be sent through this route for any research or innovation relevant to the above regardless of funding Council or whether relevant to multiple Councils.

NIHR; Impact of COVID-19 on healthcare and other key workers from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds

The NIHR and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) are jointly calling for research proposals to investigate emerging evidence of an association between ethnicity and COVID-19 incidence and adverse health outcomes.

DFID: Data Challenge for #COVIDaction

Rapid deployment grant funding of up to £50,000.

This data-intensive response is required for national and local governments, public health personnel, the private sector, and community-based organisations to make the critical decisions needed to save lives.

Challenge Target Areas:

• Data-use solutions that support data integration and analysis
• Data sources and collection tools that inform response
• Responsible data needs in COVID-19 data systems

Closing date 9 May 2020

NERC: Urgency Grants. COVID-19

The NERC Urgency Grant scheme exists to provide funding for unexpected and transient scientific opportunities created by unpredictable natural events.

NERC welcome Urgency proposals related to the current Coronavirus outbreak. Research must fall predominantly within the NERC remit. Proposals will need to be sensitive to social distancing and other restrictions being brought in as a result of the current situation. For this exceptional situation, the urgency process will be slightly different to the normal process to help us process these requests as quickly as possible. See link for further details.

Horizon 2020 Covid 19

For information on research & innovation in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak see link

NIHR Pre-doctoral Fellowship Round 2

• medical statistics
• health economics
• clinical trial design
• operational research
• modelling
• bioinformatics
• qualitative research
• mixed methods
• epidemiology

The Royal Society Research Grant - ECRs

The Royal Society's Research Grant scheme is open for applications..The grant scheme is aimed at early career researchers, or researchers returning from a career break.

Closing date 19 May 2020

EPSRC New Horizons Call

EPSRC invites the submission of proposals for projects within the Physical and Mathematical Sciences themes, which will help grow the portfolio of new, transformative research ideas. The aim is to ensure the continued flow and support of novel, adventurous research ideas into the EPSRC portfolio and broader UKRI funding streams.  

Up to £19m is available for this call. Funding is to support projects of up to 200k each for up to 24 months in duration.

Closing date: 18 June 2020

EPSRC: Discipline hopping in information and communication technologies

Discipline Hopping Awards will provide short-term support to allow researchers from core ICT fields with other disciplines and/or user fields. The aim of this is to foster new interactions, bringing a multidisciplinary and user-driven focus to research. Alternatively, non ICT specialists can apply for funds to bring a technological perspective to their home discipline.

No closing date

EPSRC: Healthcare Technologies: Call for Investigator-Led Research Projects

The Healthcare Technologies theme has prioritised funding to support novel investigator-led projects. We are inviting investigator-led proposals and intend to batch these through the year. This will allow prioritisation panel membership to better reflect the expertise required to assess the multidisciplinary, team science and impact considerations which are a common feature of high quality Healthcare Technologies research.

No closing date

EPSRC: Preparatory access through PRACE

The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) announces the opening of preparatory access through PRACE. Preparatory access will allow researchers to test and develop their codes to ensure suitability for the PRACE Tier-0 systems.

No closing date

Health & Care Research Wales. Health Research Fellowship Award

Health & Care Research Wales: Partner Funding Schemes

These are schemes run by others in which Health and Care Research Wales is a funding partner.

It includes participation in agreed National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) programmes, which provides Wales-based researchers with full access to the Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation, Health Technology Assessment, Health Service and Delivery Research and Public Health Research funding schemes.

Various closing dates

EPSRC fellowships

No closing date

ESRC: Research Grants

If you have an excellent idea for a research project, the best way to seek funding for it is through our Research Grants open call. Awards ranging from £350,000 to £1 million (100% full Economic Cost (fEC)) can be made to eligible institutions to enable individuals or research teams to undertake anything from a standard research project through to a large-scale survey and other infrastructure or methodological development.

Health & Care Research Wales. Social Care Research Fellowship Award

NIHR: Exploring how to support local government health research

The Public Health Research Programme are accepting Stage 2 applications to this funding opportunity. 

The NIHR is looking to explore how it can strengthen its support to research in the local government environment. The NIHR recognises that innovation is happening in some local authorities and wants to explore how current, or new, systems could be developed, at a local level, to support sustainable and influential research activity.

This call provides specific funding (up to £50,000 per site) for up to 10 sites across the UK. This first round of funding will be available between June and September 2020 and is to fund the exploration of how a local authority might form the basis of a research system that will enable that authority to become research active. There will be a second round for this call launched in summer 2020.

Applications are welcomed from throughout the UK and may be from an individual or group.

Closing date: 22 May 2020

ESRC Research Methods Development Grants (2020)

The Economic and Social Research Council is pleased to invite proposals for methods development grants to support the social science community to work collaboratively across sectors and disciplines to address common methodological challenges. Proposals must aim to achieve at least one of the following:

• Develop new methods
• Apply existing methods in a novel way
• Develop our understanding of a methodological challenge and scope the new research activity required to address it. 

Revised closing date 11 June 2020

UKRI GCRF/Newton Fund Agile Response call to address COVID-19

Proposals are invited for short-term projects addressing and mitigating the health, social, economic, cultural and environmental impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak in Low and Middle Income Countries.

ISCF Future flight challenge (FFC) phase 2: strands 1 & 2

FFC aims to develop and demonstrate integrated aviation systems to enable the safe introduction of new classes of electric and/or autonomous air vehicles. These could include drones, urban air mobility vehicles or electric sub-regional aircraft.

Innovate UK will invest up to £30 million in innovative projects as part of Phase 2 of the Future Flight Challenge. They are looking to fund projects that will develop integrated aviation systems and/or vehicle technologies that enable new classes of electric and/or autonomous air vehicles. Solutions should be able to be integrated into a mature operational environment, ensuring safe and reliable operation in flight and on the ground.

Strand 1, the “fast track” strand  encourages applications from smaller companies and organisations who traditionally do not work within the aerospace / aviation sector. It is open to collaborations only.  

Strand 2,will focus on larger projects and encourage applications that seek to integrate more extensive technologies and systems. It is open to collaborations only. 

Closing date 1 July 2020