Wellcome Trust: Covid-19 – understanding the biological significance of SARS-CoV-2 variants

Eligibility criteria

• You have received funding for SARS-CoV-2 research (your previous funding does not have to be from Wellcome) and your research outputs have been made available to support the Covid-19 pandemic response (for example, advisory roles, reports, preprints, publications)
• As the lead applicant for a team, you must be able to demonstrate you can drive and lead a substantial collaborative research programme
• You must be able to contribute at least 20% of your research time to the programme
• At the point of application, you should have a permanent, open-ended or long-term rolling contract, or the guarantee of one. The contract should not be conditional on receiving this award
• If you have less than three years remaining on your contract at the point of application, you must have secured your next position at an eligible organisation and provide a letter of support from them

Project eligibility criteria

• You can carry out research using systematic approaches to improve our understanding of the biological significance of SARS-CoV-2 variants, focused on laboratory investigations in immunology, virology or structural biology
• Your research will have benefit to and be of relevance to low- and middle-income countries
• You can identify a pathway(s) to rapidly share your research outputs to influence national and/or global decision-making in and controlling the Covid-19 pandemic
• You can describe how you will engage public stakeholders in the research to ensure it is trustworthy, acceptable to and supported by relevant communities
• You can describe how your approach will strengthen local capability for a research response to future outbreaks of other pathogens
• Applications must have a multidisciplinary approach
• We are interested in approaches that connect laboratory characterisation with the detection of variants and genomic surveillance, as well as the clinical presentation

Your team

• Teams may be based in the same or in different organisations
• Team size will depend on the proposed research. It will usually range from two to eight applicants, including the lead applicant
• Co-applicants can be at any career stage and based anywhere in the world, apart from mainland China
• Each co-applicant must make a significant and essential contribution to the research proposal, for example designing the research, writing the application and/or managing the programme. They must be able to contribute at least 20% of their research time to the programme
• Co-applicants do not need to have a permanent, open-ended or long-term rolling contract. They may be employed on another grant or ask for their salary on this application. However, their employing host organisation must guarantee space and salary support (if they can’t get it from other sources) for the period of time that the co-applicant is working on the grant
• They can be based in the same or in different organisations, and come from any discipline, but the added value of the team approach must be clear
• Wellcome encourages lead applicants to put together diverse teams
• Researchers can only submit one application to this funding call as a lead applicant and can be co-applicants on up to two further applications

About your proposal

Wellcome will review your research proposal, its fit to scope, and your skills and experience, in particular:

• The vision and scope of your proposal, including the aims, methods and the impact your research is likely to have on understanding Covid-19 variants
• The strength of your collaborative approach, including the track records of all team members, relative to their career stage, and in the context of the proposed work
• The plans for sharing your research outputs with health policymakers to influence national decision-making in the Covid-19 response
• The benefit and relevance of your research to low- and middle-income countries
• How your proposal will increase in-country research and response capabilities in low- and middle-income countries and empower countries to carry out research and be leaders in outbreak response
• The plans for engagement of relevant public and community stakeholders and the potential of these plans to bring about benefits and positive change and/or mitigate risks
• How your proposed research environment supports the planned work

For more information, visit the funding call URL

Deadline: 28 April 2022 (17:00 BST)