This scheme provides funding for established researchers and teams from any discipline who want to pursue bold and creative research ideas to deliver significant shifts in understanding related to human life, health and wellbeing.
Who can apply
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
and/or
- developing methodologies, conceptual frameworks, tools or techniques that could benefit health-related research.
An award can be held by an established researcher or a team of researchers led by an established researcher.
If you are applying as a team of researchers
Team size will depend on the proposed research. It will usually range from two to eight applicants, including the lead applicant. The primary location for the research, including the leadership of the programme, must be within the UK, Republic of Ireland and/or a low- and middle-income country.
If you are applying as an individual
You cannot involve coapplicants in your application and award, but you can still work with collaborators.
Whether applying as an individual established researcher who will employ staff through your grant, or as a team of researchers, we encourage lead applicants to put together diverse teams. You will be expected to actively promote a diverse, inclusive and supportive research environment within your team and across your organisation.
Other Wellcome awards
An established researcher can be a lead applicant on one Discovery Award as a sole applicant.
There is no set limit to the number of team awards you can lead.
There is no set limit to the number of awards you can hold as a coapplicant provided any salary claimed through these awards does not total more than 1.0 full-time equivalent (FTE).
In all instances, you will need to justify how you will be able to manage your commitments and responsibilities across these grants.
Current holders of Investigator Awards and Senior Research Fellowships cannot be a sole applicant for a Discovery Award. They may be the lead applicant or coapplicant for team awards. There is no set limit to this.
Read about the different applicant roles at Wellcome and how many awards you can apply for or hold at one time.
Resubmissions
If you are unsuccessful with an application to this scheme, you can submit one more full application for the same project. Significant changes are needed for the second application. You do not need to contact us first.
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.
Is your research right for this scheme?
You must check whether Wellcome Discovery Research can fund your type of research project before you apply.
Check what we fund in Discovery Research
Your research must:
- fit within what we support in Discovery Research
- have the potential to improve human life, health, and wellbeing.
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
- be in a single discipline or multidisciplinary.
Your research must not:
- fall outside of what we support in Discovery Research. Check what we don’t fund.
Is your organisation right for this scheme?
The administering organisation is the organisation responsible for submitting your final application to Wellcome and managing the finances of the grant if it is awarded.
The lead applicant must be based at an eligible administering organisation that can sign up to our grant conditions.
The administering organisation owns any Wellcome-funded intellectual property generated as result of any award, even when the research was undertaken by a team of researchers.
Where your administering organisation is based
The administering organisation must be in one of the following:
- UK
- Republic of Ireland
- a low- or middle-income country (apart from India and mainland China)
The organisation must be a not-for-profit and can be a:
- higher education institution
- research institute
- healthcare organisation
- charity or social enterprise
How applications are assessed
We will review your research proposal, skills and experience, and research environment. The assessment weightings are used at interview stage.
Your research proposal (50%)
To be competitive, your research proposal will be:
- Bold. It aims to deliver a significant shift in understanding and/or it provides a significant advance over existing methodologies, conceptual frameworks, tools or techniques. It has the potential to stimulate new and innovative research.
- Creative. Your proposed approach is novel – it develops and tests new concepts, methods or technologies, or combines existing ideas and approaches in a new way.
- High quality. It is well-designed, clear, supported by evidence and the proposed outcomes/outputs are feasible.
Your skills and experience (applicants and any coapplicants) (25%)
We will review:
- your research outputs and contributions to the research community
- your previous contributions to, and plans for, developing team members and other researchers
- your leadership and management skills, and how you plan to develop these during the award
- how the programme will be managed and led
- if applying as a team of researchers, your rationale for a team approach, team composition (including your approach to diversity, inclusion and career stage) and the contribution of each team member.
Your research environment (25%)
We will review:
- how you will contribute to the strategic aims of your organisation
- how your research environment(s) will help you develop your research capabilities, and leadership and management skills
- your experience of, and plans for, contributing to a positive and inclusive research culture.
Research costs we’ll cover
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. When applying, you should cost the application at 1.0 (100%) full-time equivalent. We will then extend the duration of the award to reflect this.
You should ask for a level and duration of funding that’s appropriate for your proposed research. You will need to justify these costs in your grant application.
What we don’t offer
The award does not include salary costs for the lead applicant, unless you:
- are based in a low- or middle-income country, and
- hold a permanent, open-ended or long-term rolling contract, and
- have to get your salary from external grant funding.
We only provide a salary for coapplicants in certain circumstances – see ‘staff costs’ for further details.
See ‘Other costs’ for the costs we will and will not provide.
Visit funding web page
(https://wellcome.org/research-funding/schemes/wellcome-discovery-awards)
