Starter grants for clinical lecturers

Many clinical lecturers have the ambition but not the funds to pursue research. Through our starter grants, we bridge this gap and enable clinical researchers to kickstart their research and establish independent careers.

Summary

Our starter grants provide up to £40,000 of research funding and mentoring over one to two years to support clinical lecturers to secure longer-term fellowships and funding. 

Video transcript

Half of my time spent researching head and neck cancer and why it doesn't respond to treatment and the other half of my time is spent in clinical work undertaking specialist training in oral pathology diagnosing diffuses the head and necks.

When we're a clinical lecturer, we have time to undertake research without any funding for research consumables and the Academy Starter Grant for Clinical Lecturers really aims to fill that gap by providing really generous consumable funding to undertake research while we're clinical lecturers and hopefully build our portfolios so that we can apply for fellowships in the future. And also the excellent career support that the Academy provides through its mentoring and career development scheme. So one of my key aims within my clinical lectureship was to apply for this grant and so I could undertake further research during my clinical lectureship.

The patients that have had lived experience of head and neck cancer are excellently placed to advise on the importance of the research questions, how suitable the methods are and they also really helped me to edit my lay summary to make it as accessible as possible. 

They also provided me advice on other things I hadn't considered such as using their expertise to disseminate my research to patients and members of the public through conferences, blog posts and podcasts and they really really helped me to refine involving patients and the public throughout the life cycle of the research.

Working in pathology, we see a lot of head and neck cancer and it really inspires me to improve outcomes for patients with head and neck cancer. It's quite a devastating disease with quite high morbidity and mortality. And I hope that by undertaking the research that I'm doing that we understand head and neck cancer better and understand which patients respond to treatment and also being able to predict which patients might not respond to treatment so that in the future we can better personalize treatments for patients and hopefully improve their outcome.

Who can apply

You can apply if you:

• have a PhD or MD
• hold a medical, dental or veterinary undergraduate degree and are registered with the General Medical Council, General Dental Council or Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons
• hold a clinical contract at a UK institution.

If you are a clinician in human or dental medicine, you must also:

• be a research-active clinical lecturer
• have a National Training Number (NTN) or NTN(A)
• be within higher specialty training
• have undertaken a substantial period of research equivalent to a PhD or research MD, if you have qualified abroad with an MD 

Your Certificate of Completion of Training (CCT) date must be no earlier than three months before your proposed project start date. There are some exceptions to this:

• Applications are welcome from primary care and dentistry clinical lecturers after CCT, as these lectureships are usually awarded post-CCT.

• Clinical lecturers who received an official extension beyond their CCT date may apply, provided their lectureship contract covers the full duration of the proposed project. 

We are reviewing application criteria for dentistry applicants, so please contact us on [email protected] if you are interested in applying.

If you are a clinician in veterinary medicine, you must be either: 

• a research-active veterinary specialist in training (resident/senior clinical training scholar) within an approved specialist training programme, with secured and protected research time throughout the proposed project
• a research-active veterinary clinician or veterinary pathologist with a Veterinary Specialist Board qualification or eligibility, and within the three-year (probationary) period of your first university appointment, and with secured and protected research time throughout the proposed project. 

If you are a senior lecturer but still within your three-year probationary period, you can apply for this scheme.

Please note that your research proposal should demonstrate clear relevance to human health.

We are reviewing application criteria for veterinary applicants, so please contact us on [email protected] if you are interested in applying. 

Who can’t apply

• Senior clinical lecturers and clinical psychologists  
• Clinical lecturers who already have substantial funding through, for example, clinician scientist fellowships, new investigator awards or large project grants 

Funding amount

Up to £40,000 

Duration

Up to two years

When to apply

• January – March
• July – September

Key dates

• Online application: January – March; July – September
• Eligibility check: March; September
• Peer review: March – May; September – November
• Panel review: May; November
• Panel meeting: June; December
• Outcome notification: Late August; late February 

How to apply

Read:

• Before you apply

You will need to apply using our online grant management system Flexi-Grant. If you have further questions, please contact [email protected]. 

Selection process

Your application will be reviewed in two stages. First, experts in your research field will review your application (peer review), then it will be reviewed by an assessment panel consisting of Academy Fellows and other experts. You will not need to attend an interview.   

Selection panel

• Professor Helen McShane FMedSci (Chair), University of Oxford
• Professor Jonathan Barratt, University of Leicester
• Professor Sube Banerjee MBE FMedSci, University of Nottingham
• Professor Jane Blazeby FMedSci, University of Bristol 
• Professor Adnan Custovic FMedSci, Imperial College London
• Professor Sophie Hambleton FMedSci, Newcastle University
• Professor Timothy Illidge FMedSci, University of Manchester
• Professor Ziad Mallat FMedSci, University of Cambridge
• Professor Matthew Pickering FMedSci, Imperial College London
• Professor Katy Vincent, University of Oxford
• Professor Sarah Walmsley, University of Edinburgh
• Professor Dennis Wang, Imperial College London
• Professor Helen Weiss FMedSci, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Panel members are unable to discuss individual applications. If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. 

Supporters

Arthritis UK

British Heart Foundation

Cancer Research UK

Diabetes UK

Kidney Research UK

The Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine 

Medical Research Council

Prostate Cancer UK 

Vivensa Foundation

Wellcome

Further information on starter grants

Project remit

Your project should fall within the discovery research remit of Wellcome and/or the Medical Research Council or our other specialist remit funders (please see the 'Supporters' section above). If in doubt, please contact us on [email protected].

If you are a veterinary applicant, your research proposal should demonstrate clear relevance to human health.

Costs

You can use the grant to cover directly-incurred research costs, including consumables, access to data sets, essential software and licences, equipment, technical support, and dissemination activities. 

You cannot use the grant to cover your personal salary costs or to employ research assistants, PhD students or postdoctoral staff. However, you can use some of the funding to buy the time of an existing staff member, such as pooled technical research staff. 

Resources

There is an interactive map of the training pathway, and the available funding offers at each career stage for clinical academics on the Clinical Academics Training and Careers Hub (CATCH). Starter grants for clinical lecturers is in the Early Post-Doctoral Phase (3a & 3b) of the map. 

• National clinical research career pathway

What grant holders say

The starter grant was an excellent way to get my project off the ground, and really helped with obtaining subsequent funding.

Dr Robert McCutcheon

My starter grant has provided vital bridging funds to strengthen my research partnerships and collaboratively develop post-doctoral funding proposals.

Dr Roxanne Keynejad