Published on 10 March 2011
EC Funding Presentations - Thursday 31 March 2011
Amy Williams, European Advisor for the UK Research Office (UKRO) in Brussels will be visiting Cambridge and giving two presentations on Thursday 31 March 2011 in Mill Lane Lecture Rooms. These sessions are aimed at researchers who are planning to submit an ERC proposal or have done recently, as well as administrators who support ERC research activities in their Schools/Departments. The second session will be of particular interest for those who are currently involvement or have an interest in the FP8 consultations.
9:15am – 10:45am, European Research Council (ERC)
- Overview of the ERC structure and funding schemes
- Successful proposals: writing a good application and interview hints & tips
11:15am – 12noon, Common Strategic Framework for Research & Innovation (FP8)
- EU policies influencing the Common Strategic Framework (CSF)
- Interim evaluation of FP7
- Development of CSF and timetable
It would be helpful, though not essential if you could indicate which sessions you will be attending by emailing hannah.pawson@admin.cam.ac.uk.
Wellcome Trust - updated instructions on costing salaries
When making an application to the Wellcome Trust where the pay increase is not known, they have allowed applicants to add 1% inflation to the salary costs of year 1 only. This is because the Wellcome Trust automatically compound inflate commencing years salaries and this is shown on the award letter.
With immediate effect, the Wellcome Trust has advised that applicants are now allowed to add 1.7% inflation instead of 1%. For further information please go to http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/Managing-a-grant/Finance-and-employment/WTD004100.htm
Your application should be calculated in the normal way on pFACT as before, however you will also need to manually calculate the 1.7% salary increase and add this amount into pFACT as a onetime salary amount. The yearly total and the manual addition from pFACT should be added together and then entered as the total on the application.
If you have any queries, please contact your School Team at the Research Office http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/research/contact/list.aspx
MRC Transfer to JeS
As part of the Research Council’s commitment to moving to the Shared Services Centre, the MRC will be transferring to the RCUK joint electronic system (JeS) at the end of March. All applications to the MRC with a deadline before the end of March will be processed through the current MRC Electronic Application and Assessment System (EAA), any applications with a deadline from April onwards will need to be submitted on JeS. The MRC section of the JeS system will be available from 21st March for people to begin to prepare applications, before that date any applications for a deadline after 1st April should be prepared off line.
The EAA system will no longer be available from the 31st March so if anyone would like to retrieve any current or historic applications from the system they must do so before 31st March 2011. Anyone who does not already have a JeS account will need to apply for one – we suggest that this is done well in advance of any application deadline. If anyone would like any help with obtaining a JeS account or training on the system please contact your School Team at the Research Office http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/research/contact/list.aspx For more information on the transfer to JeS please see the MRC website: http://www.mrc.ac.uk/Fundingopportunities/Applicanthandbook/transfertoJeS/index.htm
Changes to pFACT: Clarification of Revised Banded Rates
In the previous bulletin there was an error in the table under "Description" as the last line read "Dir of Research" (ADR-AS-09-B) and instead should have read "Assistant Director of Research" (ADR-AS-09-B). Please find enclosed an update table below of the rates which were updated in pFACT on Monday 7 March.
| Band | Old bandings (with on costs) | New bandings from 7 March 2011 (with on costs) |
| Lecturer (LEC-AS-09-B) | Spine Point 55 £54,435 | Spine Point 56 £56,130 |
| Senior Lecturer (LEC-AS-10-B) | Spine Point 61 £65,393 | Spine Point 62 £67,416 |
| Professor CB4 banded (PRF-AS-12CB4-B) | Spine Point 89 £152,230 | Spine Point 88 £147,737 |
| Assistant Director of Research (ADR-AS-09-B) | Spine Point 55 £54,435 | Spine Point 56 £56,130 |
The rationale for the new rates is that TRAC (Transparent Approach to Costing) methodology requires that the Banded rates be reviewed every three years. When the exercise to review the rates was undertaken, only four grades required changing and these are listed in the above table. If you have any queries regarding this, please contact your School team at the Research Office http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/research/contact/List.aspx or the pFACT helpdesk at pFACT.helpdesk@admin.cam.ac.uk, tel 01223 765432.