Published on Tue, 21/04/2015 - 12:23
The Royal Society University Research Fellowship (URF) and Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship (DHF) schemes aim to provide funding to outstanding scientists who have the potential to become leaders in their chosen field. They have recently announced changes to both fellowship schemes:
Linking indexation to on salary payments to HM treasury's GDP deflator
- For 2010 - 2011, this has been set at 1.5%. Both new and existing awards will have this new rate applied to them. It will be reviewed annually by the Royal Society
Introduction of more stringent controls on salaries to ensure that these schemes continue to attract early career researchers
The following guidance will be applied in forthcoming rounds:
- URFs are an early career fellowship and it is expected that requested salaries will be comparable to post-doctoral researcher or early stage lecturer
- An annual spine point increase of 2% will be applied to the salary
A new sponsor has been set up in pFACT to account for the change in inflation - 'Royal Society (1.5 Inflation)' and all applications should be made using this sponsor. However, it is not possible or desirable to amend pFACT to account for the change in spine point percentage as it will distort the true cost. We have agreed with the Royal Society that our applications will be based on our current payscales but that they will award based on the reduced percentage. The department will then have to decide whether they will be able to make up the shortfall.
The Research Office are in close contact with the Royal Society on this and other administrative issues in grant management and we will keep you up to date with any further developments. For further information about the changes go to www.royalsociety.org/University-Research-Fellowships/ or contact your School Team at the Research Office www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/research/contact/list.aspx