Published on 6 November 2020
X5 Upgrade - Tuesday 24th November 2020
X5 - the costing and pricing tool for research projects is due to be upgraded. Technical issues have now been resolved and the new date for the upgrade is Tuesday 24th November 2020. The upgrade will include improvements to the interface, fixes to known bugs and enable us to remain supported by the supplier. A summary of the changes to expect in X5 can be found on the slides and presentation given at RGUG on 24th September. For the upgrade to happen, there will be a few hours when X5 and other Research Office systems will be unavailable as follows -
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System Downtime on Tuesday 24th November 2020 |
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X5 |
7am - 1pm |
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Research Dashboard |
7am - 1pm |
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ROO Portal |
7am – 11am |
If you have any queries, please email x5upgrade@admin.cam.ac.uk.
Christmas and New Year Deadlines for Applications and Expenditure Statements
Due to the Christmas vacation the Research Operations Office (ROO) will close from 5pm on Wednesday 23rd December 2020 and will re-open on Monday 4th January 2021. Therefore please be aware of the following deadlines and ensure that your researchers are made aware of these arrangements.
Final Expenditure Statements for UKRI awards over the Christmas period must be confirmed to the Research Operations Office by Friday 27th November 2020. This is to allow Final Expenditure Statements to be submitted to the funder, prior to the Christmas closure.
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Applications - if you have a funder deadline between Wednesday 23rd December 2020 – Monday 4th January 2021, applications should reach the ROO by |
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7 Working days deadline |
Monday 14th December 2020 |
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2 working days deadline |
Monday 21st December 2020 |
If you have applications with a funder deadline in the first week of January, when counting back for 2 or 7 working days, Wednesday 23rd December will be the last full working day before Christmas. You can use the online calculator to show the number of working days prior to the funder deadline that your application needs to be with ROO for checking. For example -
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Funder deadline |
Wednesday 6th January 2021, 5pm |
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7 working days |
Thursday 17th December 2020, 5pm |
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2 working days |
Monday 4th January 2021, 5pm |
As a reminder, the ROO asks for a minimum of four weeks’ notice of the intention to submit to a particular scheme. Some funders have very short turnaround times which means that it's not always possible to give the ROO four weeks' notice of intention to submit. In these circumstances, please continue to contact the ROO at the earliest opportunity so that we can assess the resource requirements to support the application. Full details of the deadline policy currently in place can be found on the ROO website.
Reminder - Cambridge Research Administrator Network Meeting on Thursday 26th November at 11am
Formed in 2018, the Cambridge Research Administrator Network (CRAN) is a network to connect Research Managers and Administrators across Cambridgeshire. The virtual meeting on 26th November will include
- how to network internally and externally
- use of digital platforms that aid networking
- navigating knowledge exchange / working remotely
If you are interested in attending, please email contact@researchadmincamb.org.uk for further details.
Reminder - Research Grants User Group Meeting (RGUG) on Thursday 3rd December at 11:15am
RGUG is an open meeting led by the Research Office and is a forum where research grant administration issues and developments are discussed. The next meeting has been set for Thursday 3rd December at 11:15am and there will be an agenda item on Brexit. Please join the meeting using the link below.
If you have any queries, please contact Hannah.Pawson@admin.cam.ac.uk.
New UKRI Website
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has launched a new website. Features include a new single funding finder which contains all funding opportunities from across all the councils. Individual council websites are still existing at this stage, but they will not publish new funding opportunities. The second phase of the website development will be complete during 2021 and this will include the full integration of the individual council websites into one overall site.
Wellcome Trust – a New Vision and Strategy
The way the Wellcome Trust funds its research is changing to support its new vision and strategy. Their new vision is to support science to solve three worldwide health challenges: infectious diseases, global heating and mental health. Existing funding schemes will be replaced by a simplified set of schemes in the coming year and the final decision points for existing schemes will take place during 2021. More details are available from their announcement.