Support for Research and Development

Neil offers extensive experience of the way national and European research funding works, having contributed to the development of new funding programmes and the evaluation and review of proposals for funding.

Link: Proposal writing

Link: Outline of FP7

Link: Partnering

Link: Publications

National research funding

Universities receive much of their funding through Research Councils. What is less well-known is that there are schemes for private sector researchers as well - mostly though the Technology Strategy Board.

External link: Open the TSB Competitions page in a new window

Proposal writing

Services offered to bidding consortia include proposal pre-evaluation and facilitation of consortium-building workshops as well as post-mortems of failed bids. Neil can also play a more central role in development of a proposal, which often begins many months before the submission.

The selection process for funding proposals is highly competitive and Neil is well placed to help you improve your chances of success:

• Only develop proposals that have a strong "fit" with the funding programme
  • understand what the EC is looking for
• Build a strong consortium and develop a strong workplan
  • with no evident weaknesses and clear roles for each partner
• Communicate your ideas clearly
  • for a non-native reader of English
• Structure your proposal around key messages
  • WHAT you intend to do to move the state of the art forward
  • HOW you bring the right team together to deliver those results, and
  • WHY the results justify the funding you are asking for

Link: More information about services for proposal-writers and EC-related training courses.

Link: More information about the "instruments" (contract types) available for Framework Seven.

Outline of Framework Programme Seven

FP7 consists of five types of activity under the following headings:

Cooperation

Aimed at supporting cooperation between universities, industry, research centres and public bodies across the European Union and throughout the world in areas of research, development and demonstration.

Ideas

Frontier research or "unpredictable and spectacular discoveries" releasing funding to teams of basic researchers (not consortia of partners) under the direction of a European Research Council.

People

Grants to enable people to embark on scientific careers and to retain and attract high quality researchers in europe, otherwise known as Marie Curie grants.

Capacities

Activities to develop and enhance the European Research Infrastructure, support for SMEs to outsource research and initiatives targetting specific regions and peripheral areas of the EU.

Joint Research Centre

Continued funding for Europe's "central" Research body.

Collaborative research

The most significant strand of FP7 is Cooperation with 65% of the budget. This in turn breaks down into nine themes in line with EU policies, with budgets ranging from €9bn down to €600m. Follow the link below for more information about the largest of the themes, ICT

• Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
• Health
• Transport
• Nano-science, Materials and Processes (NMP)
• Security & Space
• Energy
• Food
• Environment
• Socio-economic research

Link: The ICT Theme

Partnering

Neil has co-authored guidance on "Partnering within Framework Programme Six IST Projects" with Charles Stubbs of ISTARIS.

Link: Further information and document download.

Consortia can also benefit from a boilerplate Memorandum of Understanding produced by Neil in conjunction with Jonathan Riley of Lawrence Graham Solicitors (Jonathan.Riley@lawgram.com)

Link: Download Word document (110Kb)

Publications

Neil has developed and delivered support materials commissioned by the Dept of Trade and Industry on locating the right area of Framework for your proposal, the evaluation process, proposal writing, exploitation of results and, more recently, on effective partnership.

The material on evaluation of proposals was turned into a highly popular roadshow event, "Surviving the Evaluation Process" delivered through promoters such as Innovation Relay Centres in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

More recently, he has produced a set of ten case-studies of the business benefits of collaborative research, published by DTI

Links: CDT ¦ Elysium ¦ in4tek ¦ KAJ-ISIS ¦ LaserScan ¦ Leslie Group ¦ Lumio ¦ OptionExist ¦ Televirtual ¦ Tunstall