Apply for Wellcome Discovery Awards

The Wellcome Discovery Awards is providing funds to established researchers and teams from any discipline who want to pursue bold and creative research ideas to deliver significant shifts in understanding that could improve human life, health and wellbeing.

What we offer?

• A Wellcome Discovery Award provides funding for research expenses.
• The award usually lasts for 8 years, but may be less for some disciplines, such as humanities and social science.
• The award may be held on a part-time basis. They will extend the duration of the award to reflect this.
• The award includes:
  • staff
  • continuing professional development and training
  • materials and consumables
  • animals
  • equipment
  • access charges
  • overheads
  • travel and subsistence
  • overseas allowances
  • fieldwork expenses
  • inflation allowance
  • open access charges
  • clinical research costs
  • public engagement and patient involvement costs
  • contract research organisations
  • other costs

Eligibility Criteria

• You can apply for a Wellcome Discovery Award if you are a researcher who wants to pursue bold and creative research ideas. You must aim to make a major contribution to your research field by:
  • generating significant shifts in understanding
  • developing methodologies, conceptual frameworks, tools or techniques that could benefit health-related research
• You will be expected to actively promote a diverse, inclusive and supportive research environment within your team and across your organisation.
• Your research can be in any discipline – including science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), experimental medicine, humanities and social science, clinical/allied health sciences, and public health – as long as it has the potential to improve human life, health and wellbeing, and aligns with the funding remit.
• The research can be in a single discipline or multidisciplinary.
• An award can be held by an established researcher or a team of researchers led by an established researcher.
• Lead applicant
  • Whether you are applying as the sole applicant or the lead applicant for a team, you must have:
    • international standing as a research leader in your field
    • experience of leading innovative and creative research
    • a track record of managing and training others
  • If you are the lead applicant for a team, you must also be able to demonstrate you can drive and lead a substantial collaborative research programme.
  • You must be able to contribute at least 20% of your research time to the programme.
  • You must be based at an eligible host organisation that can sign up to the grant conditions. It must be in one of the following:
    • UK
    • Republic of Ireland
    • a low- or middle-income country (apart from India and mainland China)
  • It must be a not-for-profit organisation. It can be a:
    • higher education institution
    • research institute
    • non-academic healthcare organisation
    • charity or social enterprise
• Coapplicants
  • Coapplicants can be at any career stage and based anywhere in the world apart from mainland China.
  • Each coapplicant must make a significant and essential contribution to the research proposal, for example designing the research, writing the application and/or managing the programme. They must be able to contribute at least 20% of their research time to the programme.
  • Coapplicants must be based at an eligible organisation that can sign up to the grant conditions.
  • The organisation can be a not-for-profit:
    • higher education institution
    • research institute
    • non-academic healthcare organisation
    • charity or social enterprise.

Who can’t apply?

• You are not eligible to apply as a lead applicant on a Discovery Award if you are the lead applicant on two other Discovery Award applications and you are waiting for a decision.
• You cannot apply if you intend to carry out activities that involve the transfer of grant funds into mainland China.

For more information, visit Wellcome.

Deadline: 21 November 2023