News & Views item - May 2010

 

 

The Wellcome Trust Announces Details of 7 Year £425,000 p/a Investigator Awards. (May 6, 2010)

The UK Wellcome Trust has announced that it has instituted an "Investigator Awards" scheme which is modelled on the its fellowship schemes, which provide funding for scientists at all stages of their careers, and give them "the flexibility and length of employment to enable them to tackle important research questions". It extends the model of personal support to researchers in established academic posts - that is, those who have tenured or quasi-tenured positions.

 

Director of the Wellcome Trust, Sir Mark Walport commented: "We have had a very positive response from the community to the announcement of the Wellcome Trust Investigator Awards. Researchers want flexibility in length and scale of funding. They do not want to be tied into a cycle of focusing on securing grants rather than tackling major research problems. Our new Awards will provide the opportunities and resources researchers need to address challenging problems."

 

The scope of an award will be determined by "the experience, ambition and vision of the researcher, and the resources required to realise this vision. The Awards will be made to researchers at two levels - New Investigators and Senior Investigators - depending on their career stage; researchers will [not] be expected to provide a detailed methodological description of how their work will be carried out or a line-by-line budget. The application form will ask researchers to outline their research vision, their approach to answering their key research questions and the approximate costs needed".

 

Explaining the vetting procedure the Trust said: "Applications will be shortlisted by Expert Review Groups, which will comprise independent research scientists from the UK and overseas. These groups will assess the vision, ambition and track record of each applicant and the potential of the applicant to achieve his or her aims. Shortlisted applications will be sent out to peer review by referees both in the UK and internationally. Finally, applicants will be invited to interview by a Selection Panel, where they will be given the opportunity to present their case."

 

TFW reported earlier on the views of the incoming president of the Royal Society, Paul Nurse, on governmental support for excellence, which clearly is modelled on the Trust's Investigator Awards.

 

However, such an approach leaves open the matter of the support that should be rendered to the newly "hatched" researcher, i.e. the postdoc. Currently the situation described by a fourth-year postdoc at UC, Berkeley is far from uncommon: talked about a lack of job security, describing a series of short-term appointments ranging from 2 to 12 months that she has held since coming to Berkeley. "I can never predict if I'm going to have a job in a few months or not.

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The Trust describes the programs as follows:

These awards build on our strategic goal of supporting the brightest researchers with the best ideas, and extend our successful fellowships funding model to researchers in established academic posts (that is those who have permanent, open-ended or long-term rolling contracts of employment salaried by their university or research institution).

 

Senior Investigator Awards Support exceptional, world-class researchers, who hold an established academic position and have a compelling long-term vision for their research. The Awards provide support that is flexible and at a level and length sufficient to enable exceptional researchers to address the most important questions about health and disease.

 

 

New Investigator Awards Support world-class researchers who are no more than five years from appointment to their first academic position, but who can already show that they have the ability to innovate and drive advances in their field of study. The Awards provide support that is flexible and at a level and length sufficient to enable exceptional researchers to address the most important questions about health and disease.