The President's Excellence Fund for Frontier Research

aerial roboticsThe College’s Strategy 2020-25 encourages us to act courageously and innovatively when pursuing new partnerships and opportunities and sets out our intention to invest funds and pursue the new and the risky. The President`s Excellence Fund for Frontier Research has been established to support research ideas could be breakthrough programs that have the potential to put us in a leadership position, even if the ideas have not yet received outside funding. Frontier research is intrinsically risky, often characterised by the absence of, or ability to expand disciplinary boundaries, resulting in a new understanding of basic research.  For more infomation about the College’s Strategy view the College’s Strategy 2020-25 webpage.

The President's Excellence Fund for Frontier Research is now open to applications. Funding will be available to support two grants, up to £250K each, for a duration of three years. There are no limits on in any individual spend category. Funds can be used to support salary, consumables, professional services, travel and subsistence and equipment. One grant will be awarded in each of two categories, an open competition, open to all academics, and an early career competition, for which the PI must be a Lecturer at the time of application.

Applications are made by Departments, who are permitted to submit one application to each competition category. Applications should be submitted by the Head of Department or their delegate to researchoffice.fundingstrategy@imperial.ac.uk by 1700 Wednesday 20 March 2024.

EFFR Guidance (pdf)

EFFR Application form (doc)

Applications will be largely forward looking, demonstrating an opportunity for 1) growth of an otherwise underdeveloped research area, 2) diversification into a new research area, or 3) new insight into a well-established research question.

For any further questions please contact Dr Mark Bambury at researchoffice.fundingstrategy@imperial.ac.uk

 

Previous Awardees
Year Awardees Title of Project
 Year 1  Professor Guy-Bart Stan, Dr John Heap and Dr Connor Myant  A novel “true 3D” bio-manufacturing platform unlocking new classes of functional materials and structures with broad applications
 Year 1  Dr Marina Kuimova, Professor Ramon Vilar and Dr Jean-Baptiste Vannier  Imaging G-quadruplex DNA in live cells with small molecule optical probes
 Year 1  Professor Mike Warner and Professor Mengxing Tang  TRUST+FWI (Transmission and Reflection UltraSound Tomography with Full-Waveform Inversion)
 Year 2  Dr Paul Bruce and Dr Matthew Santer  Packing for a Journey to Mars
 Year 2  Professor Anastasios Karadiitris, Dr Antonia Rotolo, Dr Sarah Fidler and Profesor Graham Cooke  CAR-iNKT cell immunotherapy for the treatment of HIV Infection
 Year 2  Professor Jane Mitchell and Dr Nicholas Kirkby  Exploring the unchartered territory of the bronchovascular bundle to uncover new biological concepts and novel therapeutic targets for cardiovascular and respiratory disease
 Year 3  Dr Karen Polizzi, Dr Chris Rowlands and Dr Cleo Kontoravdi  Integrating living analytics into bioprocessing
 Year 3  Dr Ben Almquist, Dr Chris Rowlands and Dr Andriy Kozlov  Sensing voltage in neurons with biomimetic quantum-dot nano-doughnuts
 Year 3  Dr Minh-Son Pham and Dr Paul Hooper  Meta-crystals: Smart architected materials containing hierarchical crystals across multiple lengthscales
 Year 4  Professor Kevin Buzzard  Doing mathematics rigorously
 Year 4  Dr Fang Xie  Next Generation Plasmonic Enhanced Downconversion Nanoprobes (PEDN) with Exceptional Brightness for Cancer Imaging
 Year 4  Dr Giovanni Sena, Dr Connor Myant, Dr Gunnar Pruessner and Professor Chris Braddock  A novel bio-hybrid module for vertical and micro-gravity farming
Year 5 Dr Malcolm Connoly Topological Quantum Computation and the Search for Majorana Fermions"
Year 5 Dr Laura Barter, Dr Rudiger Woscholski, Professor Nick Long and Professor Oscar Ces The World's First Catalytic Fertiliser (CENUP)
Year 5 Professor Alexandra Porter, Dr Theoni Georgiou, Professor Mary Ryan, Professor Terry Tetley, Professor Omar Usmani, Professor Brian Robertson and Professor Robert J Wilkinson Aerosolised Microparticle Drugs to Treat Pulmonary Tuberculosis
 
Previous Awardees