UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships

1. Secure the support of your host School or Institute

The commitment required for fellows is substantial and only applicants with the backing of a host University of Edinburgh School or Institute will be eligible for our internal selection process.

As a first step please contact your relevant University of Edinburgh School/ Institute Research Office to register your intent to apply.

Find your School or Institute Research Office

Without the confirmed support of the School Director of Research or CMVM Institute Director, you will not be eligible to submit to the Colleges’ internal selection process.

Please also complete the Notification of Intent form, which includes a link to an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion monitoring form.

*You may or may not have provided demographic data to the University of Edinburgh at another time. However, this data is limited in completeness, and things can change over time. By completing this survey, you will enable us to develop insights into how effectively our internal selection process supports our diverse research community.  Furthermore, for Round 9 we are required to report to UKRI on our findings, and so our EDI form has been changed to reflect the data we need to provide. We do request that you please take the time (it should be no more than 5 minutes) to complete the EDI form linked to the Notification of Intent submission.

Complete Notification of Intent Form

2. College level selection process

All applicants who secure the support of a host School/Institute should complete and submit the following to the relevant College Research Office by 22 April 2024.

• Summary (550 words)
• Vision and approach (4 sides A4 + diagrammatic workplan)
  • What are you hoping to achieve with and how will you deliver your proposed work?
• Applicant capability to deliver (1650 words)
  • Why are you the right individual to successfully deliver the proposed work?
• Career development (1000 words)
  • Why is this fellowship the right way to develop your career and how will you use it to benefit others?
• Host organisation support (1000 words)
  • How will the host organisation support your fellowship?
• Resources (1000 words)
  • Indicate what you will need to deliver your proposed work.   

N.B. you do not need to provide a detailed costing.

Guidance on how to complete these sections may be found on the UKRI call webpage under "How to apply" 

Future Leaders Fellowships: round 9 – UKRI

College Research Office contact details for submission:

 Outcomes from the College processes will be shared by early-May 2024 to all candidates.

The Colleges will each prioritise up to 10 applications, which will go forward to the university-level panel for the final selection. In addition to the draft application detailed above, applicants who progress to this stage will be required to submit a 5-minute video pitch and given the opportunity to provide a statement responding to any feedback from the College panel.

Details of how and when to submit the video pitch and Response to panel comments will be provided to nominated candidates.

The outcomes of the University of Edinburgh internal prioritisation process will be shared by 18 May 2024.

Following selection, we offer support to prepare the selected candidates’ full application for submission, allowing time for local budget approval. This includes:

• Access to current successful Fellows at University of Edinburgh, ask them questions and learn from their experiences.
• Proposal support: from 18th May 2024 until full submission, candidates will work with peer reviewers, their Research Funding Specialist and local research support to develop drafts of the full application and ensure financial and support commitments are appropriately considered and justified.

Candidates are expected to seek and allow sufficient time for academic peer review, particularly senior academic colleagues.

Full proposals should be submitted on The Funding Service (UKRI’s electronic grant submission portal) by 18 June 2024, 4pm.

Unsuccessful candidates will receive feedback that aims to help with further development of their career plans.

If you don’t already have a system login, you need to create an account well ahead of the deadline. Follow the guidance on the UKRI FLF webpages.

The College panels will consist of Directors of Research and the Dean of Research.

The University panel will consist of representatives from the College panels, former UKRI FLF panellists, Deans of Research (or representatives) from each College and chaired by the Vice-Principal Research and Enterprise.

The criteria used will be those set by UKRI for the Future Leaders Fellowship call.

Documents

We will provide template documents to support your application. This will include the scoring spreadsheets that the panel will use to assess and rank applications.

For queries about the University of Edinburgh internal selection process, please contact Dr Nicholas Duvall, UK Research Funding Manager, Edinburgh Research Office.