Deadline: 7 May 2020
The AXA Research Fund has announced an Exceptional Flash Call for Proposals for Mitigating risk in the wake of the Covid-19 Pandemic.
The AXA Research Fund’s mission is to support outstanding researchers committed to improving peoples’ lives through innovative research in areas of Climate & Environment, Health, New Technologies, and Socio-Economics.
The AXA Research Fund has committed support to emergency research initiatives at the beginning of the crisis; however, it is also necessary to inform its aftermath as well as a potential second wave, particularly in lower income countries. It is also a time to start questioning how to better prepare for the next crisis – be it epidemic, climate or ecological – while we learn from the current one.
Areas
This Research Fund is opening a call for projects in the following areas:
- Protecting vulnerable populations from epidemics and catastrophes, including COVID-19: be it migrants, informal settlements, workers in the informal economy, isolated people, people with disabilities, the elderly
- Improving data collection and quality in health: how can data and technology help get out of the crisis, understand it and mitigate it? How can it inform future containment and epidemic control?
- Understanding the effects of confinement and social distancing: what are the effects of confinement and social distancing on society and households? What are the mental health consequences? The social and domestic repercussions?
- Early warning and preparedness: how to re-enforce health infrastructure and ecosystem (including medical devices and drug supply) to be better prepared and how to protect health workers and caregivers?
- Preserving the environment and health: connections between climate change, biodiversity loss and the origin of viral disease including socioeconomic dynamics leading to infectious disease outbreaks and sanitary crisis; Learnings from COVID-19 for mitigating future related crises in climate and biodiversity.
Preference will be given to projects with a local focus and potential applicability on a global scale.
Axa Research Fund Awards
These AXA Awards aim at supporting promising mid-career researchers between PhD + 6 years and PhD + 10 years maximum on a priority topic for society. The support of the AXA Research Fund should be transformative for the researcher and the advancement of their field.
Funding Information
The AXA grant is awarded for a maximum amount of 250 000€ for the whole duration of the project.
Duration
- This exceptional AXA grant is awarded for a period between 12 and 24 months.
- Longer durations are not a priori excluded but should be precisely justified and should not exceed 36 months in total.
- Projects selected for funding are expected to start between July and November 2020. Early results should be given in the following 12 months.
Ethics
The AXA Research Fund places extremely high importance on the ethics of the work it supports. Programs are required to comply fully with all relevant ethical review processes and for this compliance to be evidenced. Cases of scientific misconduct (such as fabrication, falsification, plagiarism or of inappropriate behavior towards staff or other parties) will be considered as breaches of the AXA ethical principles and will be excluded from funding.
Eligibility Criteria
- The project calls are global, however, the AXA Research Fund partners with academic institutions only; NGOs, governmental bodies, foundations, cultural institutions (such as museums), hospitals are not eligible but are welcome as a collaborator when it is necessary for the proposed research. Preference will be given to preestablished parterships.
- Ideally applications will go through Institutions. Institutions can present only one candidate per Institution’s department (meaning from the same Institution, one candidate can be put forward by the department of economics, biology…).
- Institutions can present only one candidate per Institution’s department (meaning from the same Institution, one candidate can be put forward by the department of economics, biology…) If 2 candidates or more are put forward by the same Institution’s department, all candidates from the department will be dismissed.
- Institutions hosting an AXA Chair cannot request for an extra grant for a researcher working on the AXA Chairholder’s team.
- Researcher: Candidates should be of the highest caliber and have demonstrated outstanding research achievements, as evidenced by the usual indicators for assessing academic excellence such as research outputs (e.g. publications), research activities (e.g. organizing networks, being involved in communities) and research impact (e.g. policy report, specific recognition through awards, etc.). The AXA grant aims at supporting mid-career researchers between PhD + 6 years and PhD + 10 years maximum.
- Research program: The research program should demonstrate its scientific originality and innovative nature and have the potential to contribute to a step change in the considered field. It is the responsibility of the institution to demonstrate the relevance of the proposed research topic to the AXA Research Fund.
- Engagement and Obligations: It is a requirement that researchers would be proactive in engaging science with society when supported by the AXA Research Fund and use an open-data framework researchers commit to sharing their project and communicating their research to a broad audience, supported by the AXA Research Fund. In addition, funded researchers agree to provide both an annual and a final project report, as well as committing to sharing their research through speaking engagements in collaboration with the AXA Research Fund. Annual and final financial reports will be requested as well.
- Diversity: Diversity will be an important criterion in the selection process whether in the research topic, gender or geography. Furthermore, attention will be given to the opportunity for the grant to deliver a significant stepchange in the career of the grantee.
For more information, visit https://www.axa-research.org/fr/page/call-for-proposals-mitigating-risk-in-the-wake-of-the-covid-19-pandemic