COVID-19 Research Response Fund

• PIs must be current salaried employees of the collegiate University of Oxford, holding a contract of employment for research.
• Projects may be hosted by any department of the University.
• Researchers holding honorary or visiting positions are not eligible to apply.
• Postdoctoral researchers are not eligible to apply as the PI.
• In earlier rounds of the Fund, projects were prioritised that could generate immediate impact. As the scope of the fund has now been expanded to projects with medium-term impact, previous applicants may reapply if their projects can still generate significant impact. 

Submitting an application

• Applications must be submitted in the Internal Research Award Management System (IRAMS). 
• Applications must be reviewed and approved in IRAMS by a Departmental Approver before they will be reviewed by the Committee. The advertised application deadline is the deadline for final submission by the Departmental Approver. Please check with your Department's Grants administration team if there is an internal deadline for their review prior to the advertised fund deadline.
• Applicants must seek approval from their Head of Department before submitting an application. Applicants from the MPLS Division or the Medical Sciences Division should also seek input from the relevant Theme Lead (see Committee) before submitting an application. 
• You must complete the Case For Support template available from IRAMS and upload it as a PDF. The combined word limit for all sections on the application form is 800 words; this limit aims to keep the applications as short as possible to facilitate rapid review by the Committee.
• Clinical research projects requiring access to COVID-19 patients in Oxford must be approved by the COVID-19 Clinical Research Review Group (CRRG) in order to gain access to the clinical space. This group meets weekly. Award of funding for clinical research from the COVID-19 Research Response Fund will be conditional on receiving approval from the CRRG. For information on applying to the CRRG contact: covid@admin.ox.ac.uk.

Costing

• The fund will cover the direct costs of research including equipment, consumables, etc.
• Salary for the Principal Investigator or other senior academics/researchers is not an eligible cost.
• Staff costs (excluding PI/senior researchers' salary) may be requested from the fund. However many funders including UKRI and Wellcome have confirmed that staff paid from projects that they fund may be redeployed to COVID-19 research. This possibility must be considered first and staff costs must be well justified. 
• Costs associated with open access publication are not eligible for support from the Fund
• Given current travel restrictions and the emphasis on short to medium term impact, costs associated with travel, hosting meetings or attendance at conferences are unlikely to be supported
• Projects can be in collaboration with other institutions outside of the University but partner costs cannot be met by this fund
• Awards can be outright or for underwriting applications to other funders. Where projects request an outright grant, the PI must explain why costs cannot be met by existing internal resources or external funding
• Awards can be used to leverage other funding. Other sources of support for the project must be entered in IRAMS

Timing

• Projects are expected to be able to start within 4 weeks of the call deadline
• Projects should generally last no longer than 15 months
• Awards can be made to projects that have already begun
• As the emphasis is on rapid response research, applicants should not typically propose to purchase equipment where this cannot be completed within 4 weeks of the award date.

This Fund is currently closed to applications. Future rounds of the Fund will depend on the available budget and will be announced at the discretion of the Committee. Future rounds will be widely communicated through the usual internal channels.

Previous deadlines: 

Round 4: Wednesday 17 June 2020

Round 3: Monday 18 May 2020

Round 2: Thursday 23 April 2020

Round 1: Thursday 9 April 2020

The Fund Secretary is Leila Whitworth: research@medsci.ox.ac.uk

Details of the projects that have been awarded COVID-19 Research Response funding are available here (Oxford SSO required).

If you have any questions, please contact Leila Whitworth research@medsci.ox.ac.uk