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Medical Sciences Internal Fund: Family Leave

The Medical Sciences Internal Fund can be used for bridging salary support to cover the costs associated with research staff who take maternity/shared parental/adoption leave whilst employed on an externally funded research grant. Applications to this scheme must be submitted by a Principal Investigator of the relevant external research grant.

To be eligible to apply to the Medical Sciences Internal Fund for maternity/shared parental/adoption leave bridging costs:

  • the staff member must be currently employed on an externally funded research grant.
  • the staff member must be taking at least 6 months of leave with at least 3 months of that leave in the duration of the grant.  

The MSIF Family Leave scheme will provide up to 3 months (1.0 FTE) of the total employer cost of their salary, minus the value of the Statutory Maternity Pay in that period.

Where the member of staff taking leave is the PI, up to three months of salary support may be used to employ a lab manager or technician or to provide 'acting up' funds to a senior member of the group.

Where the member of staff is not the PI and the external funder does not allow maternity pay as an eligible cost, MSIF will consider applications for up to three months (FTE) of salary support to contribute to the cost of leave. In exceptional circumstances a longer period of support may be considered.

Please submit your application online via the Internal Research Award Management System (IRAMS). 

Guidance in the form of quick reference guide (QRG) documents for applicants, departmental approvers and administrators can be found on Research Support pages.

Applications must be reviewed online for eligibility and departmental support by departmental approvers and, where approved, submitted to the Committee for review. 

Applications, scores and reviewer comments may be shared with other internal University panels to ensure maximum value for money.

Applications for this scheme can be submitted at any time via IRAMS, but ideally before the period of leave has started.

Application outcomes are expected to be returned within six weeks of submission.

For all enquiries please email mrf@medsci.ox.ac.uk