GrantRadar

UK Research and Innovation (BBSRC)

BBSRC new investigator award: applicant-led mode

BBSRC's always-open scheme to help newly appointed university lecturers, and lecturer-level researchers at research council institutes and fellows, win their first major research grant for investigator-led work anywhere in BBSRC's bioscience remit (plants, microbes, animals and humans, and the tools and technologies behind biological research). The applicant must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for BBSRC funding and must never have led a competitively won grant that paid for research and innovation associate (postdoc) staff. Projects can cost up to £2 million full economic cost over up to five years, of which BBSRC pays 80%. There is no closing date: apply when ready.

Apply on the funder’s site
You could get
£1 – £2,000,000
no fixed round
Deadline
Rolling
apply any time
Effort
Heavy
budgets, references, often several stages

Who can apply

  • Open to organisations with standard UKRI eligibility (higher education providers, approved independent research organisations, public sector research establishments, research council institutes, Catapults and approved NHS bodies); the project lead must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for BBSRC funding, and only the lead research organisation submits
  • The scheme is for newly employed university lecturers, researchers at research council institutes at a level equivalent to lecturer, and fellows at a level equivalent to lecturer, seeking their first major research support
  • You must not have received, or currently hold, competitively obtained research or support funding from any source as project lead (principal investigator) that included research and innovation associate (postdoc) staff costs, including grants tied to fellowships; postdoc support given by your institution as part of an internal agreement or start-up package must be declared but does not make you ineligible
  • Having been a project co-lead on successful grants is allowed
  • Pending applications must be declared and BBSRC told if they succeed
  • You can have only one new investigator application under consideration at a time, and researchers may be awarded only one grant under the scheme
  • The project lead must be the intellectual leader; project co-leads are allowed only where they bring expertise outside the lead's own skill set
  • UKRI individual eligibility also applies: you must hold an employment contract (or a substantial formal relationship) with the submitting organisation lasting to the end of the grant and be UK resident
  • Overseas organisations and businesses can only be project partners

What it funds

Excellent new investigator-led research across the breadth of BBSRC's scientific remit, including:

  • Research projects, including data intensive and technology development projects
  • Equipment or use of existing facilities
  • Community resources, new facilities, or infrastructure
  • Research networks and coordination
  • Summer schools
  • Biotechnology or biological research in plants, microbes, animals and humans, and tools and technology underpinning biological research, at any scale from molecules and cells to tissues, whole organisms, populations and landscapes

multidisciplinary proposals crossing into other research councils' areas are welcome, but the primary focus must fall within BBSRC's remit (queries to remit@bbsrc.ukri.org). Applications can be made as a plain new investigator award or combined with the Industrial Partnership Award (IPA, industry contributing cash of at least 10% of full project costs) or LINK (at least 50% of full project cost from industry).

What it will not fund

  • Applications from organisations based overseas or business-based applicants (they can be project partners)
  • Uninvited resubmissions of projects already submitted to UKRI or any other funder
  • Applicants who have led, or currently lead, competitively obtained research or support funding from any source that included research and innovation associate (postdoctoral) staff costs, including grants associated with fellowships

How to apply

  1. Check eligibility (queries to eligibility@bbsrc.ukri.org) and remit (remit@bbsrc.ukri.org), and make sure your research organisation is registered on the UKRI Funding Service (Je-S is not used)
  2. Start an application on the UKRI Funding Service (https://funding-service.ukri.org/OPP1273/apply/1304), confirm you are the project lead and sign in or create an account
  3. Answer the questions in the text boxes: summary, core team, BBSRC scheme (new investigator, with IPA or with LINK), remit committee (A to D), vision, approach (with a Gantt chart or similar project plan), applicant and team capability (R4RI), research organisation support, applicant fit to the funding opportunity, career development, project partners and their statements of support, resources and cost justification, data management, facilities, ethics and RRI, animal, GMO and human participation sections, and Trusted Research and Innovation
  4. Send the completed application to your research office for checking; they submit it to UKRI
  5. Your application goes to independent expert review, you can respond to reviewers' comments, and a moderating panel then scores it

there is no closing date; the notional closing date shown in the Funding Service (29 April 2027) is a system requirement and should be ignored. Applications are pooled for assessment with standard research grants, but research potential rather than track record is taken into account. If your application is rejected before peer review you may submit a revised version immediately. Confidential information goes to peer.review@bbsrc.ukri.org.

Have ready

  • IPA or LINK applications only: a letter from your institution's technology transfer office outlining management of outputs from the research, as a single PDF no larger than 8MB
  • Statements of support from each named project partner

everything else is answered in Funding Service text boxes; images are allowed but text paragraphs or tables in images lead to rejection. Facility use needs the facility's prior agreement.

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