NIHR GOSH BRC Junior Faculty Conference and Training Support Fund

The NIHR Great Ormond Street Hospital Biomedical Research Centre (NIHR GOSH BRC) Junior Faculty Conference and Training Support Fund provides an opportunity for early career researchers working on translational research projects in the areas of child health across Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) and the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health (ICH) to apply for funding to support their attendance at conferences to disseminate their research findings or to attend training to learn new skills. The fund is aimed at early career researchers working on translational research projects across Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) and the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health (ICH).

The GOSH BRC Junior Faculty has a small amount of funding to award for this call. Applicants to the fund should be actively participating in the conference (e.g. they have been invited to do an oral or poster presentation). The fund is also for training opportunities (e.g. a one-day training course), where it can be demonstrated that the training opportunity would allow the recipient to learn a new skill or knowledge, which could also be shared or implemented within the wider team at GOSH/ICH. In both scenarios, it would be necessary to demonstrate how the conference or training opportunity would benefit the recipient’s career development.

You can apply for the following costs in this call:

1) Registration fees associated with attending a conference/meeting or training course.

2) Travel, accommodation, and subsistence fees associated with attendance at an in-person conference.

3) Applicants can also apply for costs for a PPIE representative to attend the conference where the research due to be presented has been co-produced (i.e., the PPIE representative has collaborated with the researcher from the start to the end of the project, including the generation of knowledge).

For anyone who is interested in applying for the scheme, but circumstances make it challenging to access, please contact brc@gosh.nhs.uk.

Find out more about how awardees have benefited from the Conference and Travel Grant scheme.

• Applicants must be an early career researcher working on translational research in the areas of child health.
  • For this funding call, an early career researcher is defined as a PhD student or staff member who:
  • has ≤£250k in total grant income as Primary Investigator across their career (excluding their own salary e.g., a fellowship grant) 
  • and/or does not hold a tenured academic or consultant position

Contact the brc@gosh.nhs.uk if you have any queries regarding your eligibility for this call.

• Applicants must hold a substantive or open-ended employment or studentship contract with either GOSH or ICH at the time of the application and at the time of attending the meeting, conference, or training opportunity. No claims will be processed if staff end their employment, or a student enters CRS prior to attending the meeting, conference, or training event.
• Applications should request no more than £250 (UK)/£500 (Europe)/£750 (beyond UK and Europe).
• Applicants must consult their employer’s expense claim policy before submitting their application. Any expense claim made must be within the rules of the applicant’s employer’s expense claim policy (UCL and GOSH). The GOSH BRC cannot approve expense claims that are not aligned with the relevant policy.
• All applicants are required to explore and demonstrate whether matched funding from another source is available to attend the conference/meeting/training course. GOSH staff members are encouraged to consider their eligibility to apply for the GOSH scholarship awards.
• For conferences and meetings, applicants should proceed to apply for the fund when they have had an abstract accepted for a poster presentation or an oral presentation, confirmation of this will need to be provided as part of the application form. The applicant is expected to have been significantly involved in the work being presented (e.g., ideally be first or last author in the abstract) and the research due to be presented should align with the BRC remit.
• Applications cannot be made for retrospective reimbursement of expenses for conferences or training courses already attended.
• There are four application deadlines per year ahead of subsequent review panels (see ‘Submission of applications’ below). Applicants should submit their application at least one month before the planned conference/training course start date to allow time for the review process to take place and application outcome to be communicated. Applicants should consider this when deciding which deadline to apply to and ensure the application can be reviewed before the conference/training course commences.
• No early career researcher will be awarded more than one award from this call per BRC term (one award between 01 December 2022 and 30 April 2028).
• Costs associated with the conference or training event need to be fully expensed by 20th March of the financial year they were awarded, but attendance can be after this date.
• NIHR funding is formally not allowed to support any research using animals; therefore, the research you present must contain a substantial component of human translational research activity.
• Awardees must acknowledge the NIHR GOSH BRC in any presentations and produce a short report to feedback to the Junior Faculty on their experience of at the conference or training activity.

You do not need to have had any prior links with the GOSH BRC to be eligible to apply. If you would like to apply, please read and complete the Guidance and Application Form, which should be sent as a word document to the GOSH BRC (BRC@gosh.nhs.uk), along with a copy of your CV. Applicants should submit their application at least one month before the planned conference/training course start date to allow time for the review process to take place and application outcome to be communicated.

Applications will be reviewed every three months, the deadlines for applications are as follows:

• 01 November 2024
• 20 January 2025
• 01 April 2025
• 01 July 2025

Applications will be reviewed by a panel of researchers from the NIHR GOSH BRC Junior Faculty Committee within three weeks of the application deadline. Applicants should expect to receive an outcome of their application within one month of the deadline they submitted to. Please note that retrospective awards cannot be made, therefore applications need to be submitted to the appropriate deadline to ensure the outcome is communicated before the conference or training course takes place. Please submit your application as soon as you know what support is required.

For any queries please contact BRC@gosh.nhs.uk.