Wellcome Trust Collaborative Awards in Science

Collaborative Awards promote the development of new ideas and speed the pace of discovery. We fund teams of researchers, consisting of independent research groups, to work together on the most important scientific problems that can only be solved through collaborative efforts.
Who can apply
You can apply for a Collaborative Award if you are part of a team of researchers who want to work together on an important scientific problem that requires a collaborative approach.

Each applicant in your team must:

be essential to the proposed collaborative research
bring different expertise to the research question
have proven research experience in their field and in collaborative research.
Each applicant should also be leading their own research group.

All applicants must be based at eligible organisations. You can all be based in the same or in different organisations.

The lead applicant must be based in the UK, Republic of Ireland, or a low- or middle-income country (apart from India). Other applicants can be based in the same or different countries anywhere in the world.

Each applicant should have a permanent, open-ended or long-term rolling contract, or the guarantee of one. Your salary must be paid by your host organisation.

If you, or any other applicants, hold a permanent, open-ended or long-term rolling contract but have to get your salary from external grant funding, you can ask us for this in your application. If this applies to you, or any other applicants on your grant, you must commit at least 10% of your working hours to this award. In this case, your host organisation must confirm details about your employment contract(s) or their policy on salary recovery costs.

Team size will depend on the proposed research, but it has to be more than two people, and usually no more than seven.

The space and resources you need must be agreed with your host organisation at the time of your application and made available to you from the start date through to the end date of your award.

Read about our Collaborative Awards grantholders and their research.

What we're looking for
Your proposal should describe a significant piece of work that addresses the most important questions, in an area relevant to the mission of the Wellcome Trust.

You should be able to demonstrate why the scientific problem you are tackling can only be solved through an integrated, collaborative team effort.

We encourage interdisciplinary research collaborations, although they are not essential.

We will review:

the track records of all team members, relative to their career stage
the importance of your research question(s) to your field(s)
the feasibility of your proposal
the suitability of the environments in which you and your team members do the research
the time you and your team members will spend on the Collaborative Award, and how it fits in with other academic commitments.