DBT India Accelerator Grant – Human Frontier Science Program Research Grants Applications Invited
DBT India Accelerator Grant – Human Frontier Science Program Research Grants Applications Invited. Interested and eligible applicants can check out all of the details on the same below:
HUMAN FRONTIER SCIENCE PROGRAM RESEARCH GRANTS
The International Human Frontier Science Program funds projects in basic research studying fundamental problems in life sciences with potential to move the frontiers. HFSPO attaches highest importance to novelty, scientific merit, internationality, and interdisciplinarity. HFSP Research grants are provided for teams of scientists from different countries who wish to combine their expertise in innovative approaches to questions that could not be answered by individual laboratories
Scientific Scope
The HFSP supports projects in basic research studying fundamental problems on all organizational and trophic levels of life sciences. The HFSP funds novel collaborations that bring together scientists with distinctly different expertise. The potential of a project to move the frontiers of life sciences and lead to a breakthrough, is a major criterion in the review of HFSP research grants, and it is understood that projects with this potential may entail high risk.
Research Team
HFSP promotes international, interdisciplinary, and new research collaboration. Scientists applying for
a HFSP research grant must be organized as an international research team (with emphasis on intercontinental collaborations). Applications from individual researchers are not eligible. The HFSP research team may include 2 to 4 (rarely 5) members; one member of the team is designated as the Principal Applicant and the others as Co-Applicants.Types of Awards
Research Grants – Program are meant to allow teams of independent researchers to develop new lines of research through a new collaboration.
Research Grants – Early Career encourage outstanding scientists in the initial period of their independent careers, to formulate novel and promising research projects. Typically, “Early Career” team members will have completed one or two periods of postdoctoral training and recently been appointed to independent staff positions.
Award Sum
Budgets are not required. Awarded teams receive a fixed sum, over three years, depending on team size (awarded 2-member teams will receive 300,000 USD, 3-member teams 400,000 USD and 4-member teams 500,000 USD annually, if all members have their labs in different countries).
Timelines
The first step in the application process is to initiate a Letter of Intent on the HFSP website by 18 March 2025 and complete its submission by 27 March 2025. for awards to be announced in March 2026. In a second step, selected applicants are invited to submit a full proposal by mid-September 2025. Decisions on awarded grants will be announced end of March 2026.
Distinguishing Features of the HFSP Research Grant Program
HFSP Research Grants support innovative basic research into fundamental biological problems with emphasis placed on novel and interdisciplinary approaches that involve scientific exchanges across national and disciplinary boundaries (see guidelines).
Participation of scientists from disciplines outside the traditional life sciences such as biophysics, chemistry, computational biology, computer science, engineering, mathematics, nanoscience or physics is recommended because such collaborations have opened up new approaches for understanding the complex structures and regulatory networks that characterize living organisms, their evolution and interactions.
Research grants are provided for teams of scientists from different countries who wish to combine their expertise in innovative approaches to questions that could not be answered by individual laboratories. Preliminary results are not required and applicants are expected to develop new lines of research through the research collaboration.
It is understood that such research inherently contains risks and HFSP expects that teams of applicants address the risks and outline mitigation strategies for their research in case of failure and how they intend to achieve their goals.
Applications for applied research, including medical research typically funded by national medical research bodies, will be deemed ineligible (see guidelines).
Applicants can check the HFSP Science Digest on recently awardee projects.
Two types of Grant are available: Research Grants – Early Career and Research Grants – Program.
Research Grants – Early Career* |
Research Grants – Program |
Both provide three years support for 2 – 4 member teams.
Awards are fixed sums dependent upon team size.
Award Information
HFSP Research Grants are team grants providing financial support to the team for three years. The amount paid depends only on team composition. For details see the application guidelines.
- The amount paid depends on the number of team members which normally should be 2 – 4.
- Two members from the same country are acceptable if the team can convince the reviewers that both members are essential for the success of the project. They will be considered as 1.5 team members if they constitute an interdisciplinary collaboration, and will be awarded an amount equivalent to 1.5 team members.
- In the case of a two-member team with one member in a for-profit institution, the annual award will be halved. In teams with more members, the team member in a for-profit research environment will not be included when calculating the amount of the award.
- No detailed budget is required. The award is for costs specifically linked to the project. This includes salaries or stipends for research assistants (post-doctoral scientists, graduate students, technicians) essential for the new collaborative project.
- No salary support (including summer salaries) can be paid from the grant for the Principal Applicant, Co-Applicant or other faculty, institutional staff such as secretaries or laboratory managers, and no student tuition fees can be paid.
Eligibility
HFSP Research Grants support teams of independent leaders of research groups. Therefore applications from individual scientists or early career researchers carrying out their postdoctoral or PhD level projects are not eligible.
- The Principal Applicant of a Research Grant must have a laboratory in a member country (with the exception of HFSP Career Development Awardees). The other team members and their laboratories may be situated anywhere in the world.
- All team members are expected to direct a research group (however small) and must have a doctoral degree (PhD, MD or equivalent). They must be in a position to initiate and direct their own independent lines of research. The HFSP award is not intended to create scientific independence, this is a decision of the research institute prior to the application.
- All team members must be able to determine the course of the HFSP-funded project and have freedom to administer the grant, if awarded.
- Structure of the team. The research teams must be international (preferably intercontinental). Normally, there will be only one team member with a laboratory in each country, teams with two members at the same institution are not eligible.
- Team members should not have collaborated before, they will normally not have published original research together, and the project must be significantly different from their ongoing research.
Research Grants – Early Career
- All members of an Early Career grant team must be within 5 years of obtaining an independent position (see below) and must have obtained their first doctoral degree (PhD, MD or equivalent) not longer than 10 years before the deadline for submission of the Letter of Intent.
- All applicants for an Early Career grant must be project leaders directing a research group (however small). They must have full responsibility for the day to day running of their laboratories and will have full control of the HFSP funds.
- Written confirmation may be requested from the Head of Department in the case of an applicant who independently oversees a research theme.
Research Grants – Program
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While researchers can be at any stage in their independent career, participation of early career researchers is encouraged also in Program Grants.
Additional conditions regarding the institutional affiliations, the number of team members, the country of affiliation, internationality of the team, concurrent applications and new applications from previous grant awardees are given in the guidelines .
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