The NIHR Exeter BRC Pre-Application Support Fund provides funding that individuals across the South West Peninsula can use to help prepare a larger application for either a NIHR Doctoral or Advanced Fellowship career development scheme. It is aimed at those that require additional support to submit a competitive application, where they would have otherwise not had the opportunity to do so.
The provision of these funds aims to enhance clinical academic career-building capacity across the region, identifying a need of healthcare professionals from both medical and non-medical disciplines, to have protected time to develop their academic career in parallel with their clinical practice. Specifically, allocated time to conceptualise and write high-quality funding applications is essential to be competitive for the NIHR career development funding schemes. The scheme, therefore, directly addresses this critical bottleneck by providing these individuals dedicated time and space to draft competitive applications.
About the Pre-Application Support Fund
We have funding available for two awards, to be started by the end of September 2025.
Funding can be requested for up to 6 months, for 0.2FTE from the award start date, with flexibility within that period for when funding is required.
In addition to the contribution of funds to buy out the necessary time to prepare a competitive NIHR career development scheme application, the funds outlined below are also available to apply for. Please refer to appendix 1 for guidance on costings.
All costs requested should be specific to preparing your future application for an NIHR career development scheme. A brief justification of how requested costs will enable this should be provided in the application form. It should be noted that any support requests, including a contribution towards salary costs, should be completed during this time period.
Awardees will become part of the NIHR Exeter BRC community where support will continue, and regular contact maintained to monitor career development and the outcome of submitted applications. To complement the support offered by the BRC, additional training opportunities will be available across our Exeter NIHR infrastructure group for academic career development. We will also provide awardees with a mentor to support the development of writing their fellowship application.
Eligibility Criteria
This round of fellowships is specifically aimed at registered healthcare professionals working in nursing, midwifery, allied health professions (AHPs), healthcare sciences, pharmacy and psychology roles employed by a partner NHS Trust of the NIHR Exeter BRC (part- or full-time). Candidates employed by the St Georges University Trust can only apply when their scope of research falls within the Clinical Mycology theme. Prospective candidates must be contracted for the duration of the award and are expected to continue with elements of their current clinical activities alongside the activities as proposed in this application.
Timeline
Application window: 12th May – 2nd June 2025
Selection window: 3rd June – 19th June 2025
Outcomes disseminated: 20th June 2025
Award start: August – September 2025 (no later than September 30th)
How to apply
Applications will be accepted until 5.00pm on Monday, 2 June 2025. Funding decisions are expected to be communicated by 20 June 2025.
Please download the application form below and submit it by the deadline to: NIHRExeterBRC@exeter.ac.uk.
For general enquiries about the application process, you may also contact us at the same email address.
You can read full details including full eligibility criteria by downloading the Further Information document below.
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