Further to the recent pre-announcement, the full details of the BBSRC sLoLa 2023 call are now available.
The sLoLa mechanism is designed to support large, integrated programs of research over a longer timeframe. Proposals must clearly justify that the work requires a single larger scale award to be carried out. The proposal must demonstrate overall coherence, connectivity, coordination, and integration of the work to be carried out, to the extent that the work could not be undertaken through funding of separate smaller awards.
BBSRC encourages applicants to think carefully about the proposed research team to ensure that the best team has been selected and that they are properly equipped to deliver the proposed programme of work in a national context. Such a team will typically be multi-investigator, multi-institution, and/or multi-disciplinary. However, investigators (both PI and Co-I) based outside the UK are not permitted. BBSRC also encourages applicants to consider Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion when forming their research teams.
Principal Investigators are not required to have held similar-sized awards before – it is the whole proposed sLoLa team that should demonstrate competency to lead complex, multi-site projects.
BBSRC is planning to fund 4-6 projects of over £2M each, up to five years in duration. Proposals must be primarily within BBSRC’s remit.
There are three mandatory stages to the application process: registration, outline, and full stage. The aim of first step, the call registration, is to ensure all potential outlines are appropriately targeted to this call, to provide an early indication of the level of demand, and to allow institutional-level demand moderation steps to be taken if necessary. BBSRC will provide non-peer review feedback on the suitability of projects for the call, which will include details on: fit to call scope, justification for sLoLa, and eligibility (BBSRC remit and applicants). Please note that the feedback will be brief and will not include any indications of the proposals’ competitiveness
University Internal selection
BBSRC might require demand management from research organisations. Therefore, this call will be managed according to the University’s restricted calls procedure.
The initial process for this is as follows:
- Applicants must complete the mandatory registration on the UKRI Funding Service platform (TFS). The funder deadline for this step is 24th May but you will need to submit to ROO 2 working days ahead of this deadline as they will complete the final step to submit to the funder. The internal deadline is therefore Monday 22nd May, 4pm.*
- We will liaise with ROO to understand the number of applicants who have registered and will discuss with BBSRC.
- Once we receive a decision from BBSRC on whether we need to limit applications, we will inform all candidates if internal selection is required or not, and what the next steps are.
* BBSRC’s advice is to submit the registration as early as possible and they will provide office feedback as described above within 10 working days.
Funder timelines and deadlines:
- information webinars: the first one of the two events took place on 20 April and the second identical webinar will be on 26 April at 2pm –register here to attend
- registration stage (mandatory): 24 May 2023, 4pm
- outline stage: 26 July 2023, 4pm
- full proposals (by invitation only): TBC
- interviews: TBC
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at researchstrategy@admin.cam.ac.uk.
Full details for this new funding opportunity are not yet available. The call is expected to open in April. This notification is to bring the scheme to the attention of schools and departments so that early planning and discussions can start taking place, and to raise awareness of information webinars the funder is holding. Internal selection deadlines and requirements, as well as any updates to this information, will be circulated once the call opens.
BBSRC has issued a pre-announcement of the 2023-24 call of their strategic Longer and Larger (sLoLa) grants call, due to open later in April.
The sLoLa mechanism is designed to support large, integrated programs of research over a longer timeframe. Successful applicants will lead large team-based fundamental bioscience research projects which push the frontiers of human knowledge. The full economic cost of your project must be over £2,000,000 and projects may be up to 5 years in duration.
BBSRC might require demand management from research organisations and it is therefore likely that this call will be managed according to the University’s restricted calls procedure. More information on this will follow in due course once the full call details have been released.
The launch of this opportunity is being supported by two webinars that will present an overview of the strategic Longer and Larger grants (sLoLa) scheme, followed by a question and answer session. A copy of the material presented will be provided after the live sessions.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at researchstrategy@admin.cam.ac.uk.