Internal Review Processes and Demand Management
Information around the University’s internal process which exist to support prospective applicants to some of the larger regularly recurring funding schemes can be found below.
If you are interested in a particular funding opportunity, please contact your relevant Research Development Manager. who will be able to provide advice on any internal competitions, funder requirements and assist you in preparing your application.
The 4 areas covered on this page are:
- BBSRC Standard Grants
- NERC Pushing the Frontiers
- AHRC and Leverhulme Trust Grant Development College
- Prosperity and Resilience Grant Development College
Apply for funding to support excellent investigator-led research across the breadth of Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) scientific remit.
The full economic cost (FEC) of projects can be up to £2 million. Funding is available for up to five years. BBSRC will fund 80% of the FEC.
This funding call includes a number of funding schemes as outlined below:
New investigator award
The New Investigator award is designed primarily to assist newly employed university lecturers, researchers in research council institutes (at a level equivalent to lecturer), and fellows (at a level equivalent to lecturer) to secure their first major element of research support funding.
You can apply as a new investigator via the parallel opportunity .
LINK and Industrial Partnership Award (IPA)
- supports collaborative research projects between at least one company and one academic partner. At least 50% of the full project cost comes from industry.
- encourage and support collaboration between academic research groups and industry. IPAs are academic-led, applicant-led mode grants that have significant industrial involvement and industry partners that contribute in cash at least equivalent to 10% of the full project costs.
International agreements
You can apply for funding through the BBSRC Standard Grants scheme with the following international bodies:
Timelines
There are three rounds of this scheme a year, which tend to happen at these approximate times:
|
Internal Expression of Interest Deadline |
Vision, Approach & Capability to Deliver Internal Deadline |
Internal Deadline for Full Applications |
BBSRC Submission Deadlines |
|
Late September |
Mid-November |
Early January |
Mid-January |
|
Mid-January |
Mid-March |
Late April |
Early May |
|
Mid-June |
Mid-August |
Mid-September |
Late September |
Details of our internal Expression of Interest (EOI) requirements for each round will be communicated closer to the time by email.
The aim of our internal mentoring process is to provide transparent, constructive, effective support for applicants and to ensure that a wide range of researchers are able to engage with and gain benefit from working with others on proposals. Over time, the process is intended to increase the proportion of applications being funded and potentially encourage more staff to seek funding from BBSRC. Applications led by ڹϳ that do not engage with this process will not be permitted to submit.
Prior to submitting any EoIs, please discuss the proposed project and its requirements with your Research Division Leader (RDL), other appropriate colleagues and Research Development Manager (RDM). They (and your RDM in particular) would be able to support development of this project before the EoI is written and help to ensure the project idea is appropriate for this funding call. They can also help you to select the appropriate mentors to support your project’s development.
Please bear in mind that there are three rounds of this BBSRC Responsive Mode call a year. Consider if you need to strengthen your proposal by obtaining more preliminary data or clarifying approaches before making an EoI. We would rather support you to make your application as strong as possible, even if this takes a little longer.
What happens after you submit your expression of interest?
The Agriculture, Food and Health Associate Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research will chair a BBSRC “Mentorship College” committee consisting of RDLs and RDMs, including those from other themes where appropriate. Firstly, the college will record the applications received and make decisions about how to support each one, drawing on the requests made by the PI in their EoI forms.
There is an expectation that applicants will have engaged with their self-nominated academic mentors prior to submitting EoIs and preferably for the project team to have presented their ideas in a seminar format, e.g. to their department, with a follow up Q&A.
The nominated mentors, the appropriate RDL and an RDM should attend. Mentors should collate the feedback from the Q&A, we suggest the RDL is Chair.
If the applicant choses the option to have written feedback on their EoI rather than discussing it in a seminar format, the mentors will be invited to provide this. If the Mentorship College feel that the application would benefit from an additional person having an input then they will discuss with the applicant so that all feedback is conducted openly by named individuals.
If the applicant choses the seminar route for feedback then this will be scheduled by the RDL if it ’t already happened. We do strongly recommend the seminar takes please before the EoI deadline as it is better to get input to help shape scientific thinking before written documents are generated.
In both cases feedback should align with the BBSRC in order to provide a relevant framework for the applicant team. Guidance for mentors will also be provided.
When initial written feedback/seminar is complete the mentorship team for each application (mentors plus RDL) will coordinate an in-person (or Teams) interactive dialogue meeting with the applicant team in preference to providing solely written feedback. The dialogue session(s) enables the panel to discuss questions arising from feedback and the EoI and provides a useful opportunity for the panel/applicants to clarify any misconceptions. The session might examine the science case, its timeliness, feasibility, level of risk, resource requirements, or presentational issues. Applicants will be given advance notice of any key discussion points that the mentorship team wish to raise to give them an opportunity to prepare their responses – this ’t an interview!
After the EoI’s discussion at the dialogue meeting, applicants will receive feedback inviting them to either:
-
proceed for the current round,
-
consider delaying to a later round to allow the application to become as competitive as possible, (there are three rounds a year) as resubmissions are not possible
-
or consider alternative and more suitable funding opportunities
If invited to proceed for the current round, the Mentorship College would generally ask for a draft of the ‘Vision’, ‘Approach’ and ‘Applicant and Team Capability to Deliver’ text sections from the full application form by the timeline outlined above. They would then provide further feedback on those sections and advice for further refinement/development.
We would like mentorship to be an ongoing process and that both the project team and mentors see value in an exchange of ideas and feedback from people who are not so close to the underpinning science as the lead academics. In this way we anticipate applications can be viewed in a similar way as by the eventual BBSRC panel, who may not be specialists in the detailed field of the application. Post-submission, it may also be helpful to discuss BBSRC reviewer comments with mentors (along with RDMs) to benefit from their expertise and insights from an outside perspective while drafting the PI Response to Reviewers.
NERC Pushing the Frontiers
Pushing the Frontiers (PtF) is one of NERC’s primary methods of responsive mode funding. The scheme is intended for projects having full economic costs of up to £950k, of which NERC will fund 80%. The scheme normally runs twice a year, with submission deadlines in January and July.
Colleagues at ڹϳ who are planning to lead a proposal are required to follow the University’s Expression of Interest (EoI) process. The main aim of the EoI process is to ensure that all NERC Pushing the Frontiers applications submitted are as competitive as possible. Centered on peer review, the process is primarily intended to provide advisory support to applicants but also with awareness that NERC can apply a submission cap if ڹϳ are not sufficiently successful in our submissions.
The process helps applicants to get a sense of how their proposal might be received if it were to be submitted to NERC. By submitting an Expression of Interest, applicants have the chance to receive the views and feedback of their peers at an early stage of writing a grant application, after the proposed research has been conceptually developed but before the investment of a significant amount of time and effort in writing a full proposal. The EoI panel provides written feedback and advice to all applicants to support them going forward.
The overall aims of the process are to ensure that only those applications that it is felt will have a reasonable chance of success are submitted to NERC, and that those submitted are as competitive as they can possibly be. While the process necessarily involves assessments being made, the aim is to support colleagues to the next stage by being a ‘critical friend’ and providing guidance for the development of their proposal.
The EoI process can also have a more flexible and developmental element; a Research Division Leader, mentor or Research Development Manager might provide more informal feedback on an EoI at any stage, ahead of the EoI process. Moreover, as laid out in the guidance, an EoI can be submitted into the formal process for panel feedback even if the author does not wish to submit to the next NERC round, so allowing a longer period for proposal development.
The diagram below summarises the main steps involved in the EoI process and gives a sense of the timeframes involved (note that the dates specific correspond to the PtF call having a proposal submission deadline in January 2026, although timeframes for subsequent rounds are likely to be similar). Details and dates associated with the EoI process for any given round are typically published and circulated approximately 5-6 months ahead of NERC’s proposal submission deadline for the round.
For more information about the NERC PtF EoI process, please contact Ali Brown, Assistant Research Development Manager in REIO (a.k.brown@reading.ac.uk).
AHRC and Leverhulme Trust Grant Development College (Heritage & Creativity Theme)
The Grant Development College is an internal review process to support the development of AHRC Standard Grants, AHRC Catalyst Awards and Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant (RPG) applications, with the aim of improving their chances of success. All grants led by ڹϳ to be submitted to these schemes must go through the Grant Development College before submission.
Applicants should first submit a Stage 1 application, which is read by a reviewer outside the PI's discipline, someone within their department and the Digital Humanities academic champion, if required. Research Division Leads, alongside the Research Development Manager and the Research Dean will compile feedback for the applicant within 4-6 weeks of submission. Leverhulme RPG outline applications can then be submitted to the funder (see link below to the Leverhulme Trust's website for further guidance).
For AHRC standard grants and catalyst grants, the full application is reviewed in Stage 2. AHRC changed the format of their submissions in June 2023, and the stage 2 application now follows this format. Please complete the stage 2 proforma below, and see AHRC's website for further guidance (under 'How to apply' in the link below)
If you wish to submit an application, please discuss with your Research Development Manager, then use the relevant template below and submit in time for an upcoming deadline. Please note that the proformas below have been updated (July 2025). Please use the new versions below:
Upcoming Deadlines: 1st December 2025
Prosperity and Resilience Grant Development College
The Grant Development College is an internal review process to support the development of UKRI Responsive Mode* Grant applications and Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant (RPG) applications, with the aim of improving their chances of success. All grants led by ڹϳ to be submitted to these schemes must go through the Grant Development College before submission.
Applicants should first submit a Stage 1 application, which is read by a reviewer outside the PI's discipline and someone within their department. Leverhulme RPG outline applications can then be submitted to the funder. For UKRI Responsive mode grants, the Vision and Approach section is reviewed in Stage 2 of this process, and then the complete UKRI application form in Stage 3. Feedback will be provided within three weeks of submission for each stage.
If you wish to submit a Stage 1 application, please discuss with your Research Development Manager, then use the relevant template below and submit at any time.
* UKRI schemes where the choice of topic lies with the applicant (bottom-up funding) and there are usually no deadlines. Schemes include: AHRC Standard Research Grants; AHRC Catalyst Awards; AHRC Curiosity Awards; ESRC Research Grants; ESRC New Investigator Grants; ESRC Secondary Data Analysis Grants; EPSRC Research Grants