To support collaborative endeavours, Imperial and IISc have agreed to provide seed funding to build research and education collaboration between both universities.

Funds can be requested to support one or more of the following activities:

• Exploratory research, travel costs and other activities that often do not receive financial support at the earliest stages. Imperial funds can also be used to support small-scale experiments or the development of prototypes;
• Outward/inward visits for academics, research staff and students to investigate the potential for, initiate, follow-up, or work on a collaborative project or training opportunity, and for other stakeholder engagement;
• ‘Hackathon’ or other collaborative day or week-long events involving staff and students from both institutions to explore new risky and ‘blue skies’ research directions and ideas;
• Longer stays for students or research staff (up to maximum 2 months) to learn new techniques, analyse results or undertake other activities;
• Set up of new networks to promote the exchange of ideas, best practice, and other research goals;
• Networking events such as workshops and seminars to bring together researchers to foster new links or strengthen existing collaborations.
• Facilitation fees for online workshops (to encourage innovative ways of online interaction)
• Payment for student assistance (to encourage student engagement in projects)

The goal is for these collaborations to support both Imperial and IISc academics to initiate and pursue collaborations that ideally lead to new science and to future applications for external funding or new innovations in education. 

This call has an indicative budget of £30-40K and INR 40 Lakhs to be awarded to 5 to 6 successful Imperial and IISc collaborating teams respectively.

 Budget requests should not exceed £5,000 from Imperial and INR 5.0 Lakhs from IISc per project. Funds can only be spent on activities that fit the purpose of this call.  Applicants should itemise their budget using the tables in the application form.  

All expenditure should be completed by 31 July 2023.

Please refer to the list of fundable/ non-fundable items below:

This is an Open Call.  At IISc, the fund is open to all faculty members. At Imperial, the fund is open to permanent members of staff only. 

Proposals must be submitted to both globalseedfunds@imperial.ac.uk and iro.admin@iisc.ac.in; with cc: chair.oir@iisc.ac.in. Only applications submitted to these two e-mail address and before the deadline, will be considered.

One proposal per Principal Applicant per call is permitted.

Each application should have one Principal Applicant based at Imperial and one Principal Applicant based at IISc and should contain:

• A written case for support (maximum 2 pages) to include:
  • A description of the relevant research/training conducted by the Imperial-based individual/group in recent years;
  • A description of the activities and collaboration proposed;
  • Explanation of how the activities proposed will generate demonstrable added value to the PI / Research Group / Department / Faculty / College
  • A description of the opportunities available for leveraging funding.

• A financial summary: Each application should provide information on the requested costs using the budget section of the application template (see ‘Funding Requested’).

• Applicable only to Imperial Applicants: An InfoEd/ Worktribe statement is not needed.

Researchers from other institutions may also participate as a Co-Investigators and at their own expense.

Applications must be completed on the template provided and within the page limit stated.

Deadlines

• Deadline for the submission of applications : 2 September 2022 (Fri)
• Release date of the results : 19 September 2022
• Start date of the awarded projects : 20 September 2022
• All awarded projects must end by : 31 July 2023

At Imperial, all eligible applications will be considered for funding by the Vice-Provost (Research and Enterprise) with assistance of the Cross-College Research Proposals Review Group and the International Relations Office. The Group will rank the proposals based on excellence of research, fit to call, value for money, potential strategic value of the partnership and the impact the award would bring to the applicant, based on their career stage and any existing networks or support. 

At IISc, all the applications will be reviewed by an internal committee of the Office of International Relations, who will rank the proposals based on the overall design and rationale, interdisciplinary and complementary nature, impact and capacity for future collaboration.

IISc and Imperial will then jointly review applications to make a final decision on which applications will receive funding.

At Imperial, Faculty Finance Officers will be informed of decisions and will arrange the set-up of an award account code, where all project related expenditure should be charged.

At IISc, the Dean of the Finance and Administration will be informed of decisions and to arrange the allotment of funds to awardees.

Reporting

Principal Applicants who are successful in receiving an award are required to provide a report within 2 weeks of the end of the award period, to both globalseedfunds@imperial.ac.uk and iro.admin@iisc.ac.in; cc: chair.oir@iisc.ac.in, using a template provided. The narrative element of the report should provide details of the relevant activities supported and how these have addressed the objectives of the call. The financial element of the report serves as a Final Expenditure Statement and should detail the award amount and the award spent.  Responsibility remains with the PI to ensure all spend has been charged to the correct award code.

Imperial is a proud signatory to the San-Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which means that in hiring, promotion and research funding decisions we will evaluate applicants on the quality of their work, not the impact factor of the journal where it is published. More information is available at https://www.imperial.ac.uk/research-and-innovation/about-imperial-research/research-evaluation/.