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Research Strategy Office

 

There are an increasing number of institutional grants, funding calls, and research funds that require facilitation and coordination to maximise their benefit to the University. The Research Strategy Office oversees such calls, grants and funds in a number of cases:

'Restricted' calls: Funding opportunities that limit the number of institutional applications, offer small numbers of awards, or are required by the funder/sponsor to be internally prioritised are usually managed by the Research Strategy Office. Occasionally, the University, on instruction from the Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Research, and Heads of School will itself restrict the number, or carry out prioritisation, of applications to a specific funding call for proposals. For further details and for all current 'restricted' calls, see the 'Restricted' Calls pages. The list of recurrent calls can be found here.

'Coordinated' calls: Funding opportunities that are agreed by the Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Research, and Heads of School to be strategically important to the University and/or that would benefit from a coordinated approach will be coordinated by the Research Strategy Office. The number of applications is not capped, but potential applicants will be invited to submit a brief overview of their proposal to the office, and sometimes attend a planning workshop, in order to strenghen potential bids and connect researchers with complimentary expertise, where appropriate. For further details see the "Coordinated' Calls page.

Large grant support: The University has set up 2 funds to provide support for development of large collaborative grant proposals: Large Grant Contributions Fund, which aims to provide financial contributions to large collaborative grant proposals and Grant preparation support fund, which provide small grants to enable preparation of large collaborative bids. The Research Strategy Office will sometimes provide assistance on large interdisciplinary grant applications for which a measure of coordination will maximise the chance of success. For more information on practical help available, please email researchstrategy@admin.cam.ac.uk.

VC and PVC Research support letters: Some funding calls specifically require the applicant to submit a letter of support from the Pro-Vice-Chancellor or, occasionally, Vice-Chancellor. In these cases, the Research Strategy Office coordinates the approval of the letters. For further details, see the VC and PVC Research support letters pages. Where a call document does not specify a VC or PVC letter of support, the letter will be signed by the applicant’s Head of Department or Head of School.

Internal funding opportunities: A number of internal calls for funding and research funds awarded directly to the University are also coordinated by the Research Strategy Office. For information on internal funding opportunities that are currently administered by the Office, see the Internal Funding Opportunity pages.