Wellcome Career Development Awards

Your sponsor must be an individual at your administering organisation. Your sponsor must hold an established post (or an honorary academic appointment) at the administering organisation for the duration of the award. 

They will be expected to:

• Guarantee the space and resources you’ll need from the start date to the end date of your award.
• Ensure the research environment will support you to complete your programme.
• Confirm workload expectations with you, If you are requesting your salary on the award, you should not spend more than 20% of your time on non-research related activities, for example clinical duties, teaching or administration. If you're in a clinical craft speciality, you may spend up to 40% of your time on clinical duties. If you are not requesting your salary on the award, you should be spending sufficient time on research to support your research team and achieve the aims of the proposed work.
• Organise a discussion about your future at the organisation, for example an appointment to a permanent position.

If you plan to work for more than three months outside your host organisation, you must also have an additional sponsor at that location who will guarantee the space and resources you'll need during your visit.

Sponsors are not paid for their input.

You should also identify a mentor for the period of your award. They should have a track record in training and mentorship, and support and guide you on how to:

• manage your application
• develop your research career
• progress with your personal development
• manage the processes and regulations at your host organisation (although they do not need to be based at your organisation).

Your sponsor can also be your mentor.

Mentors are not paid for their input.

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 tools or resources such as datasets or clinical records
• providing access to organisations led by or working in collaboration with lived experience experts
• providing expertise on working in different countries
• sharing subject-specific knowledge and guidance, for example, expertise on statistical analysis or measurement of specific variables

Collaborators do not have to meet eligibility requirements, and they are not required to give a minimum research time commitment.

Collaborators cannot receive a salary or compensation for the time spent on the proposed project. You can request costs to cover their expenses, for example for their grant-related travel and the costs associated with providing the agreed input into the research, including the materials and consumables involved. These should be costs directly related to the research.

We will provide your salary if:

• you do not have a post, or
• you have a temporary or fixed-term post with four years or less remaining on your contract.

If you have a permanent post, you can only ask for your salary if you are based in a low- or middle-income country and you hold a permanent, open-ended or long-term rolling contract and have to get your salary from external grant funding.

Your administering organisation must confirm:

• that you have to get your salary from external grant funding to participate in the research
• that they will underwrite the salary and post for the period of time that you will be working on the grant.

We will fund the total cost of your salary for the entire period of the grant.

You can only receive one salary.

Your salary should be based on the pay scales of the host organisation that will be employing you. It should include:

• your basic salary
• employer’s contributions, including any statutory obligations (for example, National Insurance contributions if you’re based in the UK) and pension scheme costs
• any incremental progression up the salary scale
• locally recognised allowances such as London allowance.

You should not include:

• any potential promotion costs
• any Wellcome fellowship supplement that was part of a previous grant.

If your host organisation is in a low- or middle-income country and you will be working in a high-income country for 12 months or more, you should be paid at an appropriate rate for that country, according to your age and experience.

You should only allow for salary pay awards during Year 1. These should be based on pay awards already agreed. If the pay award is not yet known, applicants should use the International Monetary Fund inflation rate, selecting the ‘inflation, average consumer price’ option as indicator.

From Year 2 onwards, we will automatically increase your salary, based on our current inflation allowance rates.

If you are a clinical academic, your salary should be appropriate to your clinical status and within the salary scale for academic and senior clinical lecturers.

If you're paid on a non-clinical salary scale, your basic salary should be in line with academics of a similar seniority.

Read about the responsibilities of grantholders and host organisations for people working on a Wellcome grant.

Teaching buyout

If you’re a humanities and social sciences researcher, you can ask for funds for teaching replacement to cover the cost of a temporary replacement lecturer. You must retain at least a 10% commitment to teaching.

Costs:

• can cover up to 33% FTE of your contracted time
• are usually for a person at a more junior level than the postholder
• can be spread across the full period of the grant.

If you already get buyout costs from another grant (funded by Wellcome or elsewhere), you can ask us for this cost, but only for the period of time on your Career Development Award when you won't receive buyout costs from another grant.

You must provide a letter from your employing organisation, confirming that your contract includes a teaching commitment. You should include this in your grant application.

Visa and work permit costs

If Wellcome is going to pay your salary on the grant, you can ask for visa and work permit costs to help you take up the post at your host organisation. Award holders who need a visa to work in the UK may be eligible for a Global Talent Visa.  

You can also ask for: 

• visa costs for your partner and dependent children 
• Immigration Health Surcharge costs for you, your partner and dependent children if you will be in the UK for six months or more 
• essential associated costs, such as travel to attend appointments at a visa application centre or embassy, and English language tests, if you can justify these. 

We will cover the salary costs of up to 4 Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) staff, full or part-time, who will work on your project. Staff members typically include research assistants or technicians employed on your grant.

You can ask for more staff costs (in addition to the 4 FTE staff) if you need:

• specialist service staff and technical experts, for example environmental sustainability, data analysis, fieldwork and clinical studies
• support because you or a member of staff employed on your grant is disabled or has a long-term health condition – see 'Disability-related adjustment support'.

PhD/Research Masters fees

We do not provide studentships on this award. But if applicants employ research staff, including technicians, on the grant they can ask for the costs to cover their PhD/Research Masters fees. Applicants can ask for fees for up to two research staff in total on the grant. Research staff should be hired to undertake specific research activities on the grant. If fees are not requested at the application stage, grant funds cannot be repurposed for them during the award.

Research staff should be defined as staff members and incur a lower fee than the student rate. Where organisations do not have a staff rate, they may request fees at the home student rate. If no other rate is available, they may request the international student rate.

You can ask for costs to cover the following types of training.

Continuing professional development and professional skills training

You can ask for a contribution towards these costs.

Types of training can include:

• research leadership, professional and people management skills
• career development support
• responsible conduct of research
• diversity and inclusion
• promotion of a healthy research culture
• understanding and reducing the environmental impact of research

We expect your administering organisation to provide and fund this training. However, if these types of training are not available, or the quality is inadequate, you can ask for up to £500 a year for you and each member of staff employed on your grant who will be:

• in a post of 12 months duration or more only
• working on Wellcome funded awards for at least 50% full time equivalent

You will need to justify these costs in your application.

Research skills training

You can ask for costs to cover training for the technical and research skills you need to deliver your proposed research.

You can ask for whatever research skills training you need for you, and each member of staff employed on your grant, who will be:

• in a post of 12 months duration or more only
• working on Wellcome funded awards for at least 50% full time equivalent

You will need to justify these costs in your application.

We will pay for the materials and consumables you need to carry out your project, including:

• laboratory chemicals and materials (for example reagents, isotopes, peptides, enzymes, antibodies, gases, proteins, cell/tissue/bacterial culture, plasticware and glassware)
• project-specific personal protective equipment (PPE) that is above the standard expected for the setting
• printing associated with fieldwork and empirical research
• associated charges for shipping, delivery and freight

If your organisation uses full economic costing methodology:

You can ask for funds to buy animals if they are essential to your project. We will also fund the charge-out rates for animal house facilities. These costs include:

• running costs (including animal maintenance, any experimental procedures, licences and relevant staff training)
• appropriate estates costs
• cage and equipment depreciation costs, but not building depreciation costs

If the research will be carried out in the UK and use macaques, they must be sourced from the MRC Centre for Macaques.

We may not pay the full charge-out rate for an animal house facility if we've provided significant funding towards the infrastructure and/or core support of the facility.

If your organisation does not use full economic costing methodology:

You can ask for funds to cover:

• the cost of buying and transporting animals
• running costs (including animal maintenance, any experimental procedures, licences and relevant staff training)
• staff costs, for example, contributions towards the salaries of animal house technicians
• equipment maintenance
• housing equipment specific to the project
• microbiological monitoring
• waste disposal
• personal and project licences
• specific and relevant training and environmental enrichment costs

In these cases we will not provide:

• estates costs
• cage or building depreciation costs

Equipment purchase

You can ask for the equipment you need to carry out your project where:

• it is not available at your administering organisation or through collaborations, and
• you will be the main user, with priority access to it. At least 50% of the use must be for Wellcome-funded activities. This can include small multi-use pieces of equipment such as desktop microscopes or shakers.

Costs may include purchase, delivery, installation, maintenance and training, where necessary.

You can purchase second-hand equipment if it is more environmentally sustainable to do so.

We will cover VAT and import duties if:

• the usual UK exemptions on equipment used for medical research don’t apply
• you’re applying from a non-UK organisation, and you can show these costs can’t be recovered

Equipment maintenance

We will cover maintenance costs for equipment that is:

• funded by us or another source
• essential to the proposed project
• five years old, or will become five years old during the lifetime of the grant
• cost effective and environmentally sustainable to keep maintaining it

Equipment maintenance can be requested for small pieces of equipment with multiple users if at least 50% of the use is for Wellcome-funded activities, and there is no mechanism in place to recoup these costs through access charges.

We will not provide maintenance support where there is a mechanism in place to recoup costs through access charges for all other equipment.

Computer equipment

We will cover the cost of:

• one personal computer or laptop per person working on the grant. The cost should be reasonable, in line with market rates, and justified in the context of the research.
• software, software licences and other recurring computing costs linked to the project
• Electronic Research Notebooks (ERN) / Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) software on a per user, per year basis for the duration of a Wellcome project and for Electronic Research Notebook or Electronic Lab Notebook software approved for use by your organisation. You cannot claim costs for Electronic Research Notebook or Electronic Lab Notebook hardware or organisation-wide Electronic Research Notebook or Electronic Lab Notebook software beyond a per user, per year basis on your project.

We won't pay for:

• significantly expensive items, unless you can justify them
• installation or training costs

You can ask for the cost of access to shared equipment, facilities or services if they’re essential to your project.

These may include materials and consumables, plus a proportion of:

• maintenance and service contracts
• staff time costs for dedicated technical staff employed to operate the equipment or facility

We don’t cover the costs of:

• estates and utilities
• depreciation or insurance
• other staff, for example, contributions towards departmental technical, administrative and management staff time

We do cover these costs if related to animal housing facilities.

If the facilities or equipment were paid for by a Wellcome grant, you can only ask for access charges if:

• the grant has ended
• any support for running costs and maintenance contracts has ended

You can ask for overheads if your administering organisation is a: 

• higher education institution, healthcare organisation or research institute outside the UK
• UK research organisation that does not receive core funding for overheads

Overheads can include:

• estates, for example building and premises
• non-project dedicated administrative and support staff
• administration, for example finance, library, and room hire

The total cost for overheads should not be more than 20% of the costs requested in your application. 

These costs must directly support the activity funded by the grant.

Sub-awarding

Applicants can also ask for overheads on any part of the grant that is sub-contracted to any of the organisations listed above. However, applicants based at a UK university can’t ask for overheads for sub-contracted activity if their university will include the sub-contracted funding in its annual report to the UK Charity Research Support Fund.

How to apply for these costs

In your grant application, you must include a letter from your Finance Director stating how the overhead costs have been calculated.

If your organisation has an externally audited or otherwise verified methodology for calculating overhead rates, then the letter must include:

• confirmation of the validated rate
• how the rate was arrived at/who provided the rate
• when the rate was last reviewed
• where details of the rate can be found

If your organisation does not have an externally audited or otherwise verified methodology for calculating overhead rates, then the letter must include:

• a breakdown of the costs requested
• confirmation that the request is a true representation of the costs incurred
   

Environmentally conscious travel

Travel on grants should be done in an environmentally conscious way, in line with our environmental sustainability funding policy. You should consider if you could meet your trip’s objectives using video conferencing, hybrid meetings or virtual attendance.

Where travel is necessary you can ask for:

• the cost of a low carbon mode of transport, even if it is more expensive (for example travelling by train instead of flying)
• economy flights when train journeys are over 10 hours, or not possible due to availability, safety, or visa permit reasons or in exceptional circumstances such as a disability, long term health condition or caring requirements necessitating faster travel. We will not pay for business class flights.
• project-related resources or activities that provide an alternative to travel, such as video conferencing, communication and file-sharing software
• costs to mitigate the carbon emissions generated by the essential travel by purchasing accredited carbon credits. If carbon mitigation for travel is not part of your organisational sustainability strategy, you can ask us for a similar level of support for other sustainability initiatives. Your organisation must get our approval before submitting an application

We won't pay for the core infrastructure that your host organisation should provide, unless you're eligible to ask for these costs under our overheads policy. Examples of these costs include:

• organisation-wide video conferencing packages
• high-speed broadband
• HD screens

Conference attendance

You can ask for a contribution towards the costs of attending scientific and academic meetings and conferences, including travel, accommodation and registration fees. The limits are:

• Grantholder – £2,000 a year
• Research and technical staff on your grant – £1,000 each a year

You can ask for the cost of accredited carbon credits to mitigate the emissions from conference travel in addition to these limits.

We provide costs to cover caring responsibilities if you or any staff employed on your grant attend a conference. This includes childcare and any other caring responsibility you have. We will pay these if:

• Wellcome is providing the salary
• the conference is directly related to the research
• the caring costs are over and above what they'd normally pay for care
• the conference organiser and their employing organisation are unable to cover the costs

You can ask for up to £1,000 per person for each conference.

Other essential travel

You can ask for travel and subsistence costs for collaborative visits for you and any staff employed on your grant to visit collaborators (or for them to visit you), and for other essential visits and stays, for example to facilities, host organisations, for sample collection and for field work. You’ll need to justify each visit and its duration. You can request the following costs.

Overseas research

If you or any research staff employed on your grant will be doing research away from your home organisation, we'll help with the additional costs of working on the project overseas. Check the 'Overseas allowances' section for details.

If you or any staff employed on your grant will be spending more than 12 months in another country, we’ll help you with the additional costs of working on the project overseas.

These costs are in addition to the standard travel and subsistence costs.

Our overseas allowances are:

• a contribution towards the personal cost of carrying out research overseas, to ensure that you are not disadvantaged
• provided on the assumption that you’ll be paying income tax, either in your home country, or the country you will be working in (your personal tax is your responsibility).
• provided on the understanding that you or your partner will not receive equivalent allowances from elsewhere

You can ask for the following allowances. You need to provide estimated costs as accurately as possible.

Fieldwork expenses can include:

• survey and data collection, including communication and data collection services and any associated costs such as essential field materials, travel costs and language translation services
• the purchase, hire and running costs of vehicles dedicated to your project
• expenses for subjects and volunteers, including the recruitment of participants, their participatory fees and travel costs
• statistical analysis

You can ask for other fieldwork costs that aren’t listed here. You’ll need to justify them.

How we calculate your inflation allowance

We will add an inflation allowance to your award. Your inflation allowance is based on your total eligible costs and the duration of the award.

We will use an inflation allowance that reflects the inflation rate of the country where the host organisation is based using data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). You'll receive the following allowance if the costs in your application are in pounds sterling.

The costs in your application must be based on current known costs, excluding inflation.

You should allow for salary pay awards during Year 1. These should be based on pay awards already agreed. If you don’t know what the pay award is yet, then use the IMF rate for the currency your award will be made in.

If your organisation receives open access block grant funding, you can ask them to cover your open access article processing charges.

If you're at an organisation that does not receive block grant funding, we’ll supplement your grant when your paper has been accepted for publication.

You cannot ask for these charges in your grant application.

If you need to carry out clinical research in the UK using NHS patients or facilities, we will cover some of the research costs.

Annex A of the guidelines for attributing the costs of health and social care research and development (AcoRD) sets out the costs we cover in the UK, and which costs should be funded through the Department of Health and Social Care in England, or its equivalent in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. If you're based in the Republic of Ireland, we expect you to adhere to the spirit of these principles.

If your proposal involves clinical research using NHS resources, check if you need to upload a SoECAT form with your application.
 

You should ask for the necessary costs to integrate key stakeholders’ perspectives across the life cycle of your project, from agenda setting, funding, and research design to implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. You cannot ask for costs for any activities that take place before the grant start date. 

Costs can include, but are not limited to:

• compensation for stakeholders’ time and expertise
• recruitment of participants, participatory fees, travel and other reasonable expenses
• incentives and recognition for involvement for example, gift cards, one-off awards. These must be aligned with our Research involving human participants policy and avoid undue inducement to take part.
• engagement professionals, for example community outreach coordinators, patient advocates, engaged research advisory board, lived experience experts
• room hire, catering and other associated costs of running interviews, workshops, focus groups, partnership building and other activities to integrate stakeholder voices into your research
• translation services, accessibility costs, survey tools to facilitate inclusive knowledge sharing
• monitoring and evaluation activities

For more information, read our guidance on using an engaged research approach.

You can ask for costs associated with disseminating research results and findings from Wellcome-funded research, including podcasts, media outreach, websites and talks.

For costs associated with written publications, consult our open access policy.

Allowed costs

You may ask for the following costs (you will have to justify them in your application):

• specialist publications that are relevant to the research and not available in institutional libraries
• consultancy fees, including for lived experience experts and where such fees are required to receive advice on a specific aspect of your proposed work which cannot be provided by anyone involved in the application
• ethics approval costs where these are charged by the approval body and they are a direct cost of the research. We will only pay the actual cost of the review. We will not pay a percentage cost of the grant.
• expenses for subjects and volunteers – includes recruitment of participants, their participatory fees and travel, as well as interviewee expenses
• reasonable research-associated costs related to the feedback of health-related findings but not any healthcare-associated costs
• costs associated with developing an outputs management plan
• questionnaires, recruitment material, and newsletters for clinical, epidemiological and qualitative research studies
• public engagement materials where dissemination (including printing and publishing) is a key activity of the project
• recruitment, advertising and interviewee travel costs for staff to be employed on the grant
• purchase, hire and running costs of project-dedicated vehicles
• project-specific personal protective equipment (PPE) that is above the standard expected for the setting

• costs to host/a contribution towards hosting:

  • a conference
  • a session within a conference
  • a symposium
  • a seminar series
  • advisory board meetings, if appropriate

  The meeting should either be:

  • for research purposes, for example data gathering
  • to disseminate your research findings, for example to policy makers.

  Costs can include:

  • travel and accommodation for keynote speakers
  • external room hire and catering
  • event publicity and conference materials
  • childcare and other caring responsibility costs for delegates
  • any costs related to accessibility and inclusion

Disallowed costs

We will not pay for:

• phone, postage, photocopying and stationery, unless you can justify these within a clinical or epidemiological study
• page charges and the cost of colour prints
• PhD stipends
• office furniture, such as chairs, desks and filing cabinets
• clothing such as lab coats and shoes
• non-research related activities such as catering, room and venue hire for staff parties, team-building events and social activities
• indemnity insurance (insurance cover against claims made by subjects or patients associated with a research programme) unless it is for a clinical trial and the insurance is a direct cost of the research
• radiation protection costs
• contingency funds
• organisation insurance
• clinical examination or course fees
• working capital costs of commercial organisations
• engagement activities that do not support an engaged approach to research or for one-off events/exhibitions

We will only fund these costs in the case of animal-related research and/or where we are providing overheads:

• estates costs – such as building and premises costs, basic services and utilities (if your organisation uses full economic costing methodology)
• research, technical and administrative staff whose time is shared across several projects and isn’t supported by an audit record
• cleaning, waste and other disposal costs