The newly formed initiative COVID CIRCLE – COVID-19 Research 
Coordination and Learning – is a partnership between UKCDR and the Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness (GloPID-R).
COVID CIRCLE will harness current UKCDR and GloPID-R activities, including continual mapping and analysis of global COVID-19 funding through our COVID Tracker. Building on this work, COVID CIRCLE will coordinate funding efforts, connect networks of researchers, and collate learnings to inform future epidemic and pandemic responses with a focus on lower-resource settings.
“Research is crucial to helping the world overcome the COVID-19 pandemic. The work of COVID CIRCLE provides critical coherence for funding research to tackle COVID-19 now, as well as help for epidemics and pandemics for the future.”
– Prof Peter Piot, Chair of Strategic Coherence for ODA Research (SCOR) Board and UKCDR.
This is a live database of funded research projects across the world related to the current COVID-19 pandemic. By providing an overview of research projects mappedagainst the priorities identified in the WHO Coordinated Global Research Roadmap: 2019 Novel Coronavirus, we aim to support funders and researchers deliver a more effective and coherent global research response.
This report provides an update to COVID CIRCLE's 2021 report, 'Funding and undertaking research during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic'. It provides specific recommendations for action by funders to improve the implementation of the Funder Principles.
On 13 December 2022, UKCDR’s COVID CIRCLE Researcher Community (CCRC) hosted a virtual conference that brought together those researching COVID-19 across the globe, funders that have supported COVID-19 research, and other global health and research for development stakeholders to discuss the impacts of the COVID-19 research response in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
A report, ‘Funding and undertaking research during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic: COVID CIRCLE lessons for funders’, published today, presents key lessons and future guidance for research funders to address the challenges of funding and conducting research in the context of an epidemic or pandemic, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
An article by UKCDR, GloPID-R and the the Covid-19 Clinical Research Coalition published in The Lancet calls for urgent collaboration and coordination for unmet, underfunded COVID-19 research priorities in low-resource settings.
On April 27 2022, members of UKCDR’s COVID CIRCLE Researcher Community (CCRC) came together with UK funders to discuss the impact of social sciences research on the COVID-19 pandemic response. The webinar was chaired by Dr Nina Gobat, lead of the WHO COVID-19 Social Science Technical Working Group.
Watch the event recording here. This meeting brought together global research funders, with the community of researchers to discuss Covid-19 research in low- and middle-income countries. Topics included Clinical research; Health systems & indirect impacts of COVID-19; Transmission; and One Health.
A set of principles to align research funders towards a coordinated effort for supporting high-quality research for the most pressing global needs in epidemics and pandemics.
UKCDR & GloPID-R are excited to announce the launch of the COVID CIRCLE Researcher Platform. This is a public website to facilitate information sharing on COVID-19 research and bring together the global research community working on COVID-19 research, in and for low resource settings.
TGHN, AAS and UKCDR have published findings of a global study to establish what are the remaining research priorities for COVID-19 and whether they are the same across the globe.
In-depth analyses of the baseline Living Mapping Review for COVID-19 funded research projects in Africa (as of 15th July 2020) to determine the funding landscape and alignment of the projects to research priorities of relevance to Africa.
Learn more about the four key elements of our work – Principles and priorities; Mapping and analysis; Researcher coordination; and Learning – in this area in this informative brochure.
About UKCDR
The UK Collaborative on Development Research (UKCDR) is a group of UK government departments and research funders working in international development research.
UKCDR exists to amplify the value and impact of research for global development by promoting coherence, collaboration and joint action among UK research funders. governed by the Strategic Coherence of ODA-funded Research (SCOR) Board.
About GloPID-R
GloPID-R is a network of funding organizations investing in infectious diseases research preparedness and response.
GloPID-R is the only alliance of its kind to bring together research funding organizations on a global scale to facilitate an effective and rapid research of a significant outbreak of a new or re-emerging infectious disease with epidemic and pandemic potential.