Shortening funding calls to as little as three working days has placed unfair pressure on university research offices and will prevent the best researchers from applying, a former director at UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has warned.
Drawing attention to a recent £10 million grant call by Innovate UK related to offshore wind technology, which opened on 29 May and closed on 3 June, Kirsty Grainger said the “ridiculously short window” to apply for grants of up to £1.5 million effectively meant institutions had three days to submit their funding bids given the call spanned the weekend.
“This is a quality as well as an [equality, diversity and inclusion] issue,” explained Grainger, who was previously head of strategy at UKRI and is now director of research and impact services at the University Bath.
Such calls are “putting massive demands on the system that is under extreme strain and pressure,” she explained.
While acknowledging that applicants had been given advanced warning in mid-April about this forthcoming grant call, Grainger said the time frame still left university research offices with less than eight weeks to pull together a grant application, and the full details of the scheme were only released on 28 May.
