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Start-up grants

We are the largest charity dedicated to kidney research in the UK.  Our research strategy to 2030 outlines our four strategic research objectives and what we want to achieve through research in the next ten-years or sooner!

In our pledge to drive a major surge in research in the UK, we are changing some of the way we do things. Our 2022 hybrid grants programme is now open. This is one of the many ways we fund and facilitate high quality research.

Dr Eddie Wang holding test tubes in his research lab

Does your proposal align to our research priorities?

In your application, we will ask you how your proposal aligns with our immediate research priority areas:

Applying and submitting your application

Both scientific and lay summaries will be used to assess each submission. Consideration will be given to how closely the proposal matches to our immediate priority areas for research and all submissions will be ranked according to their potential to deliver against these.

All applicants must be resident in the United Kingdom and the research must take place in a UK establishment.

Successful applicants will be invited to submit a full application in due course. This invitation is no guarantee of funding which will be competitively awarded. Only applications invited to the second stage will be considered.

Applicants will be notified on 31 May 2022 if they are invited for a full application to be submitted by 6 July 2022.

We welcome pre-submission enquiries. You can find more information about our grants in our regulations and conditions.

Submit an expression of interest

We are pleased to invite expressions of interest from teams or individuals whose proposals directly address our immediate priority areas for research, and who seek initial or further support to establish their research career. 

We are keen to encourage applications from new investigators who have not previously held competitively awarded project or start-up funding as a principal investigator. 

We will only consider one application type per applicant even if you have several research ideas, and applicants can only apply in one of our 2022 grants rounds. If you already hold three or more active awards from us, you are ineligible to apply this year.

Our expression of interest forms have moved to our online grants portal. Please sign up for an account if you don’t have one already.  

Closing date: 5pm, Tuesday 17 May 2022

For further information contact:

Dr Aisling McMahon: 01733 367 887

Elaine Davies: 01733 367 835

What difference can funding make to you?

Dr Soma Meran

"Funding has enabled me to set up preliminary data to apply for intermediate fellowship applications and enabled me to be more competitive in these applications."

Dr Soma Meran, Innovation grant recipient

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