Abstract

To be successful in applying for European Commission (EC) research funding requires academic excellence, but it also benefits immeasurably from institutional support and research managers who take a proactive approach. What can we as research managers and administrators do to make sure that Principal Investigators (PIs) at our institution are best placed to apply to these competitive schemes?

At our universities (King’s College London and the University of Edinburgh), we have taken a similar approach to supporting EC applications and are continuing to build on previous EC successes. This includes holding information events for particular schemes and utilizing our previously successful applicants in order to demystify these calls and build confidence in potential applicants. Both institutions have built a holistic support system that includes proposal development, budget support and accessible online resources. We have also found success through providing a specialist proposal review service to PIs and meeting with PIs early in the process in order to find the best funding opportunity for them. This wraparound approach ensures that academics are well supported in building competitive proposals.

In this session, we will look at how we have encouraged and supported PIs at our institutions to submit high quality EC applications, both at an individual level and through a systematic approach to increasing our success rates. We will focus on the ever-popular European Research Council and Marie Sklodowska Curie schemes but with some reference to collaborative applications too and tips for coordinating multi-partner collaborative bids. We will cover how both institutions have built strong working relationships with individual researchers whilst simultaneously providing consistent support across a large institution with many different departments and subject areas. Furthermore we will look at how in an ever-changing research landscape, we can best position ourselves to respond to new challenges and make use of new systems and technologies.

Attendees will be encouraged to ask questions, share their own experiences and contribute to a discussion around best practices. No prior experience is required but attendees are welcome to share their own tips and suggestions.