New Grant Round opened - Deadline 3 February 2012

The CEE is calling for applications to its Research Grants scheme.

The grant round will be the last to be financed through as award from the University of London Vice Chancellors' Development fund made to the CEE in 2007. The aim of the grant scheme is to foster collaborative research across the CEE's participating institutions. In today's world, the importance of understanding ecology and evolution goes far beyond academic curiosity. With its breadth of membership, the CEE is in a unique position to provide the cross-disciplinary research necessary to make genuine progress in the field. The small grant scheme will contribute to realising potential cross-institutional synergies.

Our aim is to assign several small grants to groups of researchers that span two or more member institutions. Funding can be sought for a variety of activities, including small research projects, workshops, meetings between scientists in view of writing a review, setting up an international collaboration or preparing a grant application. Grants are assessed following the criteria listed at the end of this document.

Applications will be assessed by the CEE Committee, whose membership covers the diverse areas of the CEE’s interests and the different member institutions. For further details and application forms visit the CEE's grants and funding page here, for direct queries e-mail cee@ucl.ac.uk.

PhD students, postdoctoral researchers and academic or research staff are all eligible to apply. PhD students should submit their application through their supervisor, and it is important that the application shows how the funding will add value to the PhD project. Applicants should clearly state the ecological/evolutionary question the study will address and should indicate how they intend to follow up the research with an application for larger-scale funding. Successful applicants will be expected to report progress to the CEE Steering Committee by an annual report and a short, post-project seminar to the CEE community.

The deadline for this round is Friday 3 February 2012, 5PM. Awards will be announced in late February.

Assessment criteria

The members of the CEE Steering Committee will assess grant proposals according to the following criteria:

- Quality of science

- Output (clearly defined, time-limited, achievable)

- Collaborative aspect (novel collaboration or new direction in existing collaboration)

- Fit to scheme (CEE remit, lack of alternative funding sources)

- Costs acceptable and reasonable