Funding to help you prepare a competitive application to one of the following NIHR career development awards:
- Predoctoral Award
- Doctoral Award
- Postdoctoral Award
- Research Professorships
- Development and Skills Enhancement (DSE) award
- Senior Clinical and Practitioner Research Award
Note that that this fund is a training and development award and does not support a specific research proposal.
ELIGIBILILTY
This scheme is aimed at groups and professions identified as underrepresented within NIHR. Applications are particularly encouraged from:
- regulated health and care professionals:
- nurses
- midwives
- allied health professionals
- pharmacists
- healthcare scientists
- social workers and public health professionals
- researchers in methodology
- applicants from ethnic minority backgrounds
- applicants who are disabled
VALUE AND DURATION
Funding can be requested for up to 12 months, with awards normally expected to last a minimum of six months.
This award provides flexible funding for:
- a contribution towards salary costs to provide time to prepare an application
- conference costs up to £1,000, including travel and subsistence
- training and development costs up to £5,000, including travel and subsistence
- support and mentorship costs up to £3,000
- other direct costs where additional support is required
It can fund training in working with people and communities (previously referred to as patient and public involvement). You can also request funding for working with people and communities and research inclusion costs within the budget available for support and mentorship.
Other examples of training and development that you could include in your application are:
- expanding networks and forming new collaborations
- attending training courses to develop research skills and experience that will benefit a future application
- placements spending time in clinical or practitioner research settings, for example at:
- clinical trials units
- local authorities
- hospitals
- research centres
- shadowing clinical academic or clinical leadership staff
- working with research infrastructure
- training in or development of skills to undertake work with people and communities
- training in or development of skills in inclusive research design
- knowledge mobilisation and/or implementation science
- other development of skills or experience which would benefit a future application
KEY DATES
Deadline: 21 July 2025
Funding decision and confirmation: November 2025
If you are looking to start your award later than 1 March 2026, you should apply to the next round of the competition (this will open in September 2025). The scheme has 3 application rounds per year.
Full details are available on the opportunity webpage.
The below webinar recording relates to previous rounds but also serves as a useful guide.