Applicants must be existing members of academic staff who acquired their PhD under 7 years ago and who have held a teaching appointment for a maximum of 7 years (since acquiring their PhD) in any Higher Education Institution in Scotland at the time of the application closing date. Please note that grants are for academic members of staff on open-ended or long-term contracts, not postdoctoral Research Fellows.
Consideration will be made for periods of maternity/paternity/adoption leave after award of PhD of up to 18 months per child. Please include the time you were away from work on maternity/paternity/adoption leave in the section ‘career history’ of the application form. Documented periods of leave for other reasons, i.e. long term medical absence, will also be taken into consideration.
Applicants are required to pursue their research in a HEI or Research Institute (RI) in Scotland. Only these are acceptable as Host Institutions.
The Grant must be in one of the STEM disciplines as defined in Section C of the guidelines, including inter-disciplinary areas: Biomedical Sciences, Engineering, Mathematical and Computational Sciences, Physical Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Social Sciences, and Health and Life Sciences. Please note that subjects in the Arts & Humanities are not eligible for this scheme. The RSE uses the AHRC definition of Arts and Humanities, available here.
The research projects proposed must align to one or more of the Scottish Government National Outcomes, as detailed in the National Performance Framework.
Once appointed, the awardees will be required to devote their full time to the research project specified in the application form.
Awardees must not hold other paid appointments without the express permission of the RSE.
Due to a recent review of the RSE Awards programme, please note that RSE Committee members are not permitted to apply for funding from an award scheme for which they serve on the Committee. Committee members who wish to apply should step down from their post first.
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