IMPORTANT! The Department has internal submission deadlines in place to allow sufficent time for checking and approval and you must meet these deadlines. We will not give final approval to an application that is late. The Departmental internal deadlines for the main calls are listed below and are generally a week or so before the sponsor deadline. 

You must read, understand and adhere to the requirements of your specific Fellowship call; there will be specific documentation and format requirements and there may be limits on what can be applied for e.g. Imperial College will double check the finanical aspects and the justification of resources where applicable, but it is your responsibility to ensure that you have submitted the required documenation in the specific format - your application will be sent back by the Research Council if you don't.

If your Fellowship scheme asks for a justification of resources you should take care with this and include justifications even if you think that it is obvious. Your Group contacts will be able to advice on this and in addition EPSRC have published a useful guide to completing this.

Some schemes require an Imperial College Head of Deparment supporting statement, this will be arranged for you.

If a Head of Department is required for The Royal Society, please add Professor Michele Dougherty with the email address ph.hod@imperial.ac.uk

Research Council Fellowships are submitted via one of two online systems:

JeS

UKRI applications are submitted using the Joint Electronic Submission system (JeS). You need to register to use this system; you should do this as soon as possible and well in advance of the call closing date. To do this, you will need to select the option 'Create Account' from the main JeS login screen and then select the option that you require the ability to create and submit fellowship proposals. JeS have a set of guidance pages and in addtion a dedicated helpdesk if you experience any difficulties - JeSHelp@rcuk.ac.uk and phone +44 (0) 1793 444164.

FlexiGrant

The Royal Society have their own submission system called FlexiGrant. Again you need to register well in advance. If you have any difficulties you can contact grants@royalsociety.org  or +(44)20 7451 2666.

Application Sharing

You must give access to the Department Research Operations Team - Louise Hayward and/or Enrico Buonaura - either on JES through Administer Access or on FlexiGrant by adding as Research Support.  You can add others to JES if you wish. FlexiGrant only allows for one person under Research Support. 

Approval

Once you have submitted your Research Council application your application is routed to Imperial College Research Services for institutional approval (and not straight to the Research Council). Your application will be checked and you will be contacted with queries / amendment requests / or confirmation that no changes are needed. Only once Research Services have given institutional approval is your application formally submitted to the Research Council. You must make sure that you are contactable during the time your application is being checked.

Worktribe is the Imperial College internal costing and approval system which generates some of the financial information you will need for your application and is also how the Department formally confirms to Research Services that an application can be submitted. We will liaise with you regarding the information that they need to do this and once it is finalised provide you with the costing information you need for your application (or complete this part for you depending on arrangements).

Once your application has been submitted it then goes through an assessment process by the Research Council. This takes a long time and in some cases your application could go through several stages of review. Please keep your Research Group contacts, Louise Hayward and Enrico Buonaura updated about any correspondance with the Research Council as they do not directly update the Department. 

Some schemes have interviews and if you are invited for one your host Research Group can help you to prepare e.g with mock interviews. The Imperial Postdoc and Fellows Development Center are also available to help and candidates should contact pfdc-support@imperial.ac.uk.

Good Luck!