Career Development Fellowship

Scheme aim The Career Development Fellowship supports new group leaders who do not have a salaried independent position to establish their own independent research group.

Career level:

• Post doc
• Early career researcher Research area:
• All research areas Funding period:
• 6 years, or part-time equivalent Funding amount:
• Salaries and running expenses and equipment for you and up to two posts

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 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

You should not have:

• Already received 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.

If your salary is fully funded by your host institution you may be eligible to apply for a Career Establishment Award. If you are a clinician, please consider our funding opportunities for clinical academic career development.

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.

*You may apply to hold a Fellowship at a CRUK Institute provided that you are not in receipt of core funding concurrently to the Fellowship.

What is funded:

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 Development Fellowship we expect at least 0.5 FTE or 80% of your working hours, whichever is greater, to be spent on academic research. Find out more about how we support part-time working and extended leave in our flexible working policies.

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 will cover:

• Your salary.
• 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.

An annual salary enhancement of £6,500 is paid each year of the funding period.