Call for Applications: Wellcome Discovery Awards

Funding Information

• The average size of a Discovery Award is £3.5 million. Applications above £5 million will be subject to additional scrutiny.
• Duration: Awards can be up to 8 years, but may be less for some disciplines, and may be longer if held on a part-time basis. The average duration of a Discovery Award is 7 years, although they have supported awards from 3 to 8 years.

Eligible Activities

• Research questions should generate knowledge that leads to a shift in understanding or delivers new insight into how human life and health work. They welcome proposals that may have a clinical or societal impact or have translational potential, but the focus should be on discovery research.
• They fund research into the:
  • fundamental processes that underpin biology, to understand more about how human life works
  • complexities of human health and disease, including clinical and population-based approaches
  • burden of disease and its determinants, where this brings new and transformational knowledge
  • development of methodologies, conceptual frameworks, technologies, tools or techniques that could benefit health-related research
  • needs, values and priorities of the people and communities affected by disease and health disparities
  • social, ethical, cultural, political, economic and historical contexts of human health and disease.
• They support research from a broad range of disciplines, including:
  • Science, technology, engineering, computation and mathematics
  • Clinical and allied health sciences
  • Experimental medicine
  • Epidemiology, population and public health
  • Arts, humanities, social sciences, and bioethics

Ineligible Activities

• Examples of things they will not fund include:
  • Large clinical trials and population interventions where the main purpose is to develop, test or implement a drug, product or intervention. Intervention designs can be used if they bring understanding of biological and/or social mechanisms of health and disease, including understanding how or why interventions work, or to establish proof-of-concept.
  • The development of compounds, tools, technologies or methodologies predominantly to be used for diagnosis, treatment or improving clinical care. The primary focus should be the benefit to health-related research although proposals may also have potential for clinical or translational impact.
  • The study of animal diseases, including in food production animals, that are not transmissible to humans or not considered a model for human biology or disease. The study of zoonotic disease is only in remit where the aspects studied are relevant to humans (transmission or disease).
  • Stand-alone resources (including databases) except as part of a proposal where generating a new resource or enriching an existing resource is required to answer specific research questions.

Geographical Focus

• UK, Republic of Ireland, Low or middle-income countries (apart from India and mainland China)

Eligibility Criteria

• You can apply for a Wellcome Discovery Award if you are a researcher who wants to pursue bold and creative research ideas. You must aim to make a major contribution to your research field by:
  • generating significant shifts in understanding and/or
  • developing methodologies, conceptual frameworks, tools or techniques that could benefit health-related research.
• An award can be held by an established researcher or a team of researchers led by an established researcher.
• Team size will depend on the proposed research. It will usually range from two to eight applicants, including the lead applicant.
• They encourage lead applicants to put together diverse teams. You will be expected to actively promote a diverse, inclusive and supportive research environment within your team and across your organisation.

Ineligibility Criteria

• You are not eligible to apply as a lead applicant on a Discovery Award if you are the lead applicant on two other Discovery Award applications and you are waiting for a decision.
• You cannot apply if you intend to carry out activities that involve the transfer of grant funds into mainland China.

For more information, visit Wellcome Trust.