UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Funding Service
We are running the funding opportunity on the new UKRI Funding Service. You cannot apply for this funding opportunity on the Joint Electronic Submissions (Je-S) system.
If you do not already have an account with the UKRI Funding Service, you will be able to create one by selecting the ‘start application’ button at the start of this page. Creating an account is a two-minute process requiring you to verify your email address and set a password.
If you are a member of an organisation with a research office that we do not have contact details for, we will contact them to enable administrator access. This provides:
- oversight of every UKRI Funding Service application opened on behalf of your organisation
- the ability to review and submit applications
Research offices that have not already received an invitation to open an account should email support@funding-service.ukri.org
To find out more about the role of research office professionals in the application process, watch a recording of a recent research office webinar on YouTube.
Submitting your application
Applications should be prepared and submitted by the lead research organisation but should be co-created with input from all investigators, and project partners, and should represent the proposed work of the entire consortia.
To apply:
- Select the ‘Start application’ button at the start of this page.
- This will open the ‘Sign in’ page of UKRI’s Funding Service. If you do not already have an account, you’ll be able to create one. This is a two-minute process requiring you to verify your email address and set a password.
- Start answering the questions detailed in this section of ‘How to apply’. You can save your work and come back to it later. You can also work ‘offline’, copying and pasting into the text boxes provided for your answers.
- Once complete, use the service to send your application to your research office for review. They’ll check it and return it to you if it needs editing.
- Once happy, your research office will submit it to UKRI for assessment. Only they can do this.
As citations can be integral to a case for support, you should balance their inclusion and the benefit they provide against the inclusion of other parts of your answer to each question. Bear in mind that citations, associated reference lists or bibliographies, or both, contribute to, and are included in, the word count of the relevant section.
Deadline
MRC must receive your application by 14 June 2023 at 4:00pm UK time.
You will not be able to apply after this time.
You should ensure you are aware of and follow any internal institutional deadlines that may be in place.
MRC, as part of UKRI, will need to share the application and any personal information that it contains with NIHR so that they can participate in the assessment process. Find out more about how NIHR uses personal information.
MRC will publish the outcomes of this funding opportunity at: board and panel outcomes.
If your application is successful, some personal information will be published via the UKRI Gateway to Research.
UKRI Funding Service: section guidance
Summary
In plain English, provide a summary of your proposed project. This summary will be sent to potential reviewers.
This summary may be made publicly available on external facing websites, so please ensure it can be understood by a variety of readers, for example:
- opinion-formers
- policymakers
- the general public
- the wider research community
Guidance for writing a summary
Succinctly describe your proposed work in terms of:
- its context and relationship to the remit of MRC or NIHR
- the challenge the project addresses
- its aims and objectives
- its potential applications and benefits
Word count: 550
Applicants
List the key members of your team and assign them roles, for example:
- principal investigator
- co-investigator
- researcher
- technician
You should only list one individual as principal investigator.
Vision and approach
What are you hoping to achieve and deliver in your proposed work?
What the assessors are looking for in your response
Explain how your proposed work:
- is of excellent quality and importance within or beyond the field(s) or area(s)
- has the potential to advance current understanding, generates new knowledge, thinking or discovery within or beyond the field or area
- is timely given current trends, context and needs
- impacts world-leading research, society, the economy or the environment
Within the vision section we also expect you to:
- provide evidence of the need for the guidance you propose to develop, such as:
- current literature
- resources
- methodological practice
- value to be added by its development
- explain how the guidance will result in clarity and wider implementation of methods
- identify the potential direct or indirect benefits and who the beneficiaries might be
When identifying benefits and beneficiaries consider:
- the importance for improving human or population health
- the potential to relieve disease and disability burden and improve quality of life
- the potential to benefit, fulfill unmet needs, or contribute to current plans in the health service or industry
- contributions to relevant areas of basic biomedical science
What the assessors are looking for in your response
Explain how you have designed your approach so that it:
- is effective and appropriate to achieve your objectives
- is feasible, and comprehensively identifies any risks to delivery and how they will be managed
- if applicable, uses a clear and transparent methodology
- if applicable, summarises the previous work and describes how this will be built upon and progressed
- will maximise translation of outputs into outcomes and impacts
- describes how your, and if applicable your team’s, research environment (in terms of the place, its location, and relevance to the project) will contribute to the success of the work
Within the approach section we also expect you to:
- provide details of the methodology you will use to develop your guidance. Include the methodology for identifying stakeholders, eliciting their views and co-producing guidance
- justify the breadth of guidance to be delivered, considering the trade-off between impact and feasibility
- include the proposed scope and format of consensus activities
- explain the format of the proposed outputs and the dissemination strategy, including optimal targeting, delivery and promotion, and legacy plans
- consider the risks of barriers to consensus and uptake, and appropriate mitigation strategies
- include the proposed project timeline
References should be included within the page count.
Create a document that includes your responses to all bullet points. The document should not exceed four sides of A4 paper in Arial (or equivalent) 11point font. Save this document as a single PDF file, no larger than 8MB and upload it, following the guidance provided within the service application.
Project partners
Provide information related to collaborating project partners and the contributions and support they are providing your project.
MRC supports collaborative research projects and team approaches. Collaborators based in different organisations to the investigators named within your application, or from industry, can be formally recognised within your application as a named project partner.
If you do not have any project partners, simply add ‘N/A’ into the text box, mark this section as complete and move to the next section.
If you do have one or more project partners that have agreed to support your project, please provide them with the guidance included within this section and request they provide responses to the questions below.
MRC expect the project partner to provide you with information confirming the nature of the collaboration, including the value of their contribution. We also require each partner to provide other relevant information that will clearly identify the relevance and possible benefits of the proposed work to the project and to the project partner. The information provided will be used during the assessment of your application.
When the partner has provided you with the required information, check that the responses adequately provide the information MRC requires and then copy and paste their responses into the text box provided.
When you have pasted the responses for each separate partner within the text box provided, please mark the section as complete and move onto the next application question.
Statement of support from project partners
Please note, while a statement of support is required to be provided by each project partner, a formal letter of support from the project partner is not required.
Where a partner has provided a formal letter of support, the relevant text confirming the responses to each question should be extracted from the letter and pasted into the text box (using the template format as detailed within the the Funding Service application). Under no circumstances should any letter of support (including signature and letter head), be uploaded to the text section or any other section of your application.
The statement of support from project partners should:
- provide the name of the project partner organisation
- detail the partner website address (or postal address)
- confirm the following, related to the partner contact information:
- partner contact name (title, first name, family name format)
- job role or title
- the person’s department (if applicable)
- confirm ‘yes’, that any person included within the application as a partner contact, are made aware their person their personal information has been shared with UKRI and their personal information will be processed as set out in UKRI’s privacy notice
- confirm the total cash or detail a £ value for any in-kind contributions being provided by the partner organisation. You are encouraged to provide a detailed description to ensure assessors can evaluate the contribution fully (the list below are examples; please add you own descriptors if a different type of contribution better describes the contribution being provided):
- cash contribution: £
- staff time: £
- access to equipment: £
- provision of data: £
- consumables and materials: £
- expertise: £
- use of facilities: £
- recruitment of people as research participants: £
- providing human tissue: £
- confirm any costs being requested by the project partner, such as minor travel and subsistence costs or if the partner is claiming costs as a subcontractor (please provide a costs breakdown to provide the assessors with detail of any costs requested by the project partner). If the project partner is not claiming any costs, indicate: ‘Zero costs requested by this project partner’
- confirm if your project partner has a dual role as a subcontractor
- confirm if the project partner you have named in your response to the first question, is from industry (or a company) ‘yes or no’? If you have responded ‘yes’, please ensure you have completed the previous industry collaboration framework section
- confirm the partner’s commitment to the project, by requesting they provide a statement of support, including information that explains:
- the full nature and relevance of the collaboration and support being provided by the partner
- how this will benefit both the project and partner
- any additional value the collaboration will bring to the project
- where relevant, projected market size, customer sales and how the organisation will commercialise the technology beyond the project
- the period of support the collaboration will cover
Please note, it is expected that the partner statement should be as concise as possible and therefore should not duplicate any information provided within any of the responses to the preceding questions.
When completed, the statement of support should be included within the text box provided.
Word limit: 10,000
Applicant and team capability to deliver
Why are you the right individual or team to successfully deliver the proposed work?
What the assessors are looking for in your response
Evidence of how you, and if relevant your team, have:
- the relevant experience (appropriate to career stage) to deliver the proposed work
- the right balance of skills and expertise to cover the proposed work
- the appropriate leadership and management skills to deliver the work and your approach to develop others
Use the Résumé for Research and Innovation (R4RI) format to showcase the range of relevant skills you, and if relevant your team (investigators, researchers, other (technical) staff for example research software engineers, data scientists and so on, and partners), have and how this will help to deliver the proposed work. You can include individuals’ specific achievements but only choose past contributions that best evidence their ability to deliver this work.
Complete this section using the R4RI module headings. You should use each heading once and include a response for the whole team, see the UKRI guidance on R4RI. You can enter ‘N/A’ for any you think irrelevant, and will not be penalised for doing so, but it is recommended that you carefully consider the breadth of your experience. You should complete this as a narrative and you should avoid CV type format.
The R4RI module headings include:
- contributions to the generation of new ideas, tools, methodologies, or knowledge
- the development of others and maintenance of effective working relationships
- contributions to the wider research and innovation community
- contributions to broader research or innovation users and audiences and towards wider societal benefit
- additions: you can use this heading to provide information which provides context to the wider application, such as detail of career breaks or disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic
Word count: 1,000
Related applications
Has a related application been previously submitted to MRC or another funding organisation?
What the assessors are looking for in your response
If the application is a resubmission, provide information on how this new application differs from that submitted previously and how you have responded to feedback. It must not be used to cover anything which should be included in the vision and approach.
If the application was previously submitted to another funder, you should provide:
- the name of the funding body
- a brief description of the project
Word count: 500
Ethics and responsible research and innovation (RRI)
What are the ethical or RRI implications and issues relating to the proposed work? If you do not think that the proposed work raises any ethical or RRI issues, explain why.
What the assessors are looking for in your response
Using the text box, demonstrate that you have identified and evaluated the relevant ethical or responsible research and innovation considerations, and how you will manage them.
If you are collecting or using data you should identify:
- any legal and ethical considerations of collecting, releasing or storing the data including consent, confidentiality, anonymisation, security and other ethical considerations and, in particular, strategies taken to not preclude further re-use of data
- formal information standards with which study will be compliant
Word count: 500
Resources and cost justification
What will you need to deliver your proposed work and how much will it cost?
What the assessors are looking for in your response
You can request 100% of directly incurred costs. Indirect and estate costs are not eligible.
Download the full economics costing template (DOCX, 96KB), complete it and then upload it as explained.
Using the text box, demonstrate how the resources you anticipate needing for your proposed work:
- are comprehensive, appropriate, and justified
- represent the optimal use of resources to achieve the intended outcomes
- maximise potential outcomes and impacts
This section should not simply be a list of the resources requested, as this will already be given in the detailed ‘costs’ table. Costings should be justified on the basis of full economic costs (FEC) of the project, not just on the costs expected from UKRI. For some items we do not expect you to justify the monetary value, rather the type of resource, such as amount of time or type of staff requested.
Where you do not provide adequate justification for a resource, we may deduct it from any funding awarded.
You should identify:
- support for activities to either increase impact, for public engagement, knowledge exchange or to support responsible innovation
- support for background review or scoping activities
- consensus activities and workshop costs, including travel and subsistence
- writing and open-access publication costs
- production of other learning resources
Word count 1,000
