Principal Investigators

Besides learning and development opportunities, network supports, online resources and community building activities for Early Career Researchers, ECRI provides specific high-level support to Principal Investigators. 

When applying for grants where support for research staff and students is explicitly requested, PIs can refer to specific current learning and development offerings as well as other supporting resources, and mentoring programmes in their application. 

Learning and development opportunities 

Imperial requires all PhD research degree students to achieve a minimum of four ECRI credits (two by the Early-Stage Assessment (ESA) and two by the Late-Stage Review (LSR)).  Additionally, students must complete the ECRI online Plagiarism Awareness course by the ESA. This requirement is called the Professional Skills Attendance Requirement.

The Researcher Development Concordat states that the responsibility of managers of research staff (postdocs and fellows) is to support and encourage their research staff to engage with professional development, develop their research identity and broader leadership skills and allocate a minimum of 10 days pro rata supporting researchers to balance the delivery of their research and their own professional development.

There are also opportunities for co-creating bespoke activities through collaboration between ECRI and PIs on programme level grants, but please make sure to discuss these with ECRI well-in-advance of your deadline to allow for planning and budgeting.  

Developing bespoke support and models of costing ECRI’s support 

Some funding opportunities, such as International Partnership Grants, MSCA Doctoral Networks, Wellcome Trust awards and others, are well-suited to include a bespoke development support from ECRI. When this is the case, it is important to ensure ECRI’s contribution is appropriately costed into the grant application.

Bespoke development support may include:

• Targeted training and development activities
• Mentoring or coaching
• Action learning sets
• Facilitated networking and collaboration opportunities
• Support for navigating complex, multi-institutional and interdisciplinary projects

An example of a successful initiative is the AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme supported by Schmidt Science awarded to IX Centre for AI in Science. This initiative included

• A 0.5 FTE dedicated to career and professional development support, tailored for participating fellows
• An additional 0.5 FTE Senior Teaching Fellow, focused on developing fellows’ AI skills

Both roles were fully funded, allowing current and future fellows to receive personalised support for both technical and professional skill development.

To explore this type of support for your own funding application, we recommend contacting ECRI as early as possible. Costing models can be based on either internal consultancy fees or the gross percentage FTE of ECRI staff required for the project.