Funding schemes
new and simplified, open to researchers in any discipline at any career stage
Discovery research leads to new insights into our life, health and wellbeing. Researchers from any background have the freedom and flexibility to ask bold and creative questions that will improve our health.
Advances in health will come from unexpected sources, and many interventions have come from curiosity-driven discovery research aimed solely at understanding how life works.
The knowledge and understanding our researchers generate could not only solve the health challenges we have chosen to focus on, but also inspire further improvements in human health that others take forward.
We want to promote a positive research culture, support personal development and good leadership, while making sure that research careers are open to everyone and lead to the highest quality research.
Michael Dunn, Director of Discovery ResearchBy focusing on discovery research, we want to enable researchers to be ambitious, take on difficult problems, and adopt creative and innovative approaches to push the boundaries of our understanding of life, health and wellbeing.
We support a broad programme of discovery research to yield new insights and tools with the potential to push the boundaries of existing knowledge or techniques through:
new and simplified, open to researchers in any discipline at any career stage
we can all help to build a better research culture – one that is creative, inclusive and honest
we're committed to making health research open to anyone with a great idea
At the end of 2018, Wellcome launched a review to look at the way it funds science. This report presents the main findings.
See everyone who's in our science teams and humanities and social science team.