How to choose between applying for a Wellcome Career Development Award and a Wellcome Discovery Award

There are limits to how many Wellcome grants you can apply for or hold at the same time, depending on your career stage. Find out how many grants you can hold as a lead or a coapplicant.

Career Development Awards offer more protected research time – you hold the award as an individual and must be able to contribute at least 80 percent of your research time to the award.

Discovery Awards are for researchers either pursuing individual-led programmes or team-led programmes. This could be researchers who are building a portfolio approach, for example leading multiple research projects at a time. You must be able to contribute a minimum of 20 percent of your research time.

A Career Development Award recognises you are developing your skills in leading your research and a research team, if applicable. We expect you to be developing your leadership skills as you grow your research group, and looking to develop areas where you can start contributing to your organisation's research culture.

Both awards have a requirement from your institution to provide you with 10 days of continuing professional development (CPD) time. How you use this should be tailored to your career progression.

On a Career Development Award, you can ask for your salary if required.  Find out when you can ask for a salary as part of your research costs on the Career Development Awards page.

On a Discovery Award, you can only ask for a contribution to your salary if you are based in a low- or middle-income country, depending on the type of contract your hold. Find out when you can ask for a contribution to your salary as part of your research costs on the Discovery Awards page.

On a Career Development Award we cover the salary costs of up to four Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) staff, full or part-time, who work on your project. Staff members typically include research assistants, technicians, post-doctoral associates and specialist research staff employed on your grant. Read the Career Development Award page for further details.

Discovery Awards have more flexibility in staffing requirements. We cover the salary costs of all staff, full or part-time, who work on your grant. Read the Discovery Award page for further details. 

Career Development Awards are only available to individuals, but you can involve collaborators in your application and award. Collaborators support the delivery of the project but don't lead on a specific component of the research. For example, collaborators could support by:

• sharing facilities
• providing access to resources
• providing expertise on working in different countries
• sharing subject-specific knowledge and guidance

Collaborators are not paid for their input but you can request costs for their expenses.

Discovery Awards are open to individual and team-led applications, where you apply as part of a team with a lead applicant and coapplicants. You can still involve collaborators in your application and award in the same way as a Career Development Award.