Career Establishment Award

Career level:

Early career researcher Established independent researcher

Research area: All research areas

Funding period: 6 years, or part-time equivalent

The Career Establishment Award supports new group leaders who have a salaried independent position to establish their own independent research group.

Eligibility:

Applications are considered from any area of our funding remit, including population, prevention and early detection/diagnosis research, but with the exception of any interventional clinical study/trial and drug discovery.

You should:

• Have a full-time, fully funded post at a UK university or research institute for the duration of the award
• Have space and facilities to run an independent research group
• Be able to demonstrate that you meet the range of skills and experience as outlined in the ‘establishing independence’ career stage in our Fellowships Competency Framework
• If you are a clinician, have completed your specialist training, which would normally include obtaining a PhD or MD, and have post-doctoral research experience

You should not have:

• Already received Fellowship funding to set up your research group
• A core-funded Group Leader position at one of our Institutes

Some other locations are not eligible; please contact us before starting your application to check your host institution is covered.Career breaks, flexible working, changes in discipline and other personal circumstances will be taken into consideration when assessing your record of outputs, research achievements and career progression.

What is funded We updated our guidelines for this scheme in November 2021. Please refer to the documents in the section 'How to apply to this scheme' for the latest guidance.

Funding support is provided for up to six years, or equivalent duration for part-time working.

We're very supportive of part-time working and for a Career Establishment Award we expect at least 15 hours a week (or pro-rata equivalent) to be spent on academic research. For this award, our general rule for fellowships of spending at least 0.5 FTE or 80% of your working hours on research does not apply. Find out more about how we support part-time working and extended leave in our flexible working policies.

Funding will cover:

• Salaries and running expenses for up to two posts. You may choose from a postdoctoral researcher, a technician and/or a (non-clinical) PhD student.
• Associated running expenses
• Equipment costs up to £25,000
• Relocation costs up to £1,000 if you wish to take up your fellowship at a new host institution (see application guidelines for more details)
• EMBO Lab Leadership for Group Leaders course: we encourage you to attend this course to gain crucial skills to run your own independent research group. Available as either an in-person (in Germany, please check with the Office for future limited UK spaces) or online course. Please see the EMBO website(link is external) for more information, including costs.

Additional support Our fellowships offer a range of benefits beyond funding, including access to networking and training opportunities, flexible working policies and an accelerated UK work visa route through the Tier 1 visa system.