Deadline: 28-Apr-22
Wellcome Trust has announced an open call with an aim to support multidisciplinary teams to help improve the understanding of the biological significance of SARS-CoV-2 variants, focused on laboratory investigations in immunology, virology or structural biology.
This call is for research into the biological significance of SARS-CoV-2 variants, focused on laboratory investigations in immunology, virology or structural biology.
The goal is to produce research that is relevant and beneficial to low- and middle-income countries. The research must support national policy makers in preventing and controlling the Covid-19 pandemic and should strengthen capability in low- and middle-income countries for a research response to future infectious disease outbreaks.
Applicants should consider how to involve and respond to the needs and concerns of relevant public stakeholders and facilitate an open and transparent environment to ensure the research is trustworthy, acceptable to and supported by relevant communities.
Funding Information
- A Covid-19: understanding the biological significance of SARS-CoV-2 variants award provides a maximum of £3 million to cover research expenses, including salaries where required.
- The award can last up to 36 months.
Eligible Countries
Where your host organisation is based: UK, Republic of Ireland, Low- or middle-income countries (apart from mainland China).
Eligibility Criteria
- You can apply to this funding call if you can meet these 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.
- You can apply to this funding call if your project can meet these eligibility criteria:
- You can carry out research using systematic approaches to improve the 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.
- They are interested in approaches that connect laboratory characterisation with the detection of variants and genomic surveillance, as well as the clinical presentation.
For more information, visit https://wellcome.org/grant-funding/schemes/covid-19-understanding-biological-significance-sars-cov-2-variants