The Dean’s Prize Award 2025
The Dean's Prize Award is a Faculty-run programme offering up to two years of funding for researchers looking to apply for significant external funding in the near future. This includes prestigious individual fellowships or interdisciplinary team funding awards.
The award is open to people from a range of backgrounds who focus on biological, medical and health and care research including:
- applied health and care researchers;
- pure science researchers;
- technologists;
- methodologists (for example, biologists, mathematicians, statisticians, epidemiologists, health economists, bioinformaticians, qualitative methodologists and computer and data scientists);
- engineers.
About the Dean's Prize
This distinguished award is part of our programme focused on promoting and developing researcher careers across disciplines. The Dean’s Prize offers up to two years of support for research activity and personal development, bridging that difficult career gap towards research independence. We recognise that outstanding applicants from different fields may have varying backgrounds and a diversity of career paths.
Our aim is to appoint excellent researchers on a clear trajectory to applying for externally funded, prestigious fellowships (or equivalent significant funding) from UK and international/ national funding bodies such as UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), European Research Council, The Wellcome Trust (WT) or National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
Funding
We are offering a salary plus up to £10,000 per annum support costs for two years. Applications for external funding are expected by the end of the first year, or early in the second year.
Award holders will be expected to secure substantial funding for their research and complete research outputs of international excellence.
Eligibility
The award is available to outstanding researchers from a wide range of backgrounds engaged in biological, medical and health and care research. It is open to both internal candidates and those applying from outside the University.
Researchers should be well positioned to make an application to an intermediate or senior level fellowship or other external significant funding awards in the near future. This includes:
- Research technologists, engineers and methodologists with exciting and novel ideas for methodology and technology development aiming to advance technology and methods in life/health sciences and research methodologies in applied health and social sciences.
- Applied health and care researchers.
- Pure science researchers.
These backgrounds cover many disciplines relevant to all researchers in the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health.
If awarded, we expect your Dean's Prize to commence before 1 January 2026. However, if your proposal falls slightly outside of this, we would potentially consider this on an individual basis, if discussed before the submission date.
Post-PhD experience
While flexible, in broad terms, we anticipate applicants will typically have three to seven years of post-PhD experience. However, we understand that not everyone's circumstances or research career pathways are the same. You may have taken time off for maternity or paternity leave or changed research direction for example. This can be detailed in the application.
Choosing the right time to apply
These awards are competitive. We encourage applicants to consider an application at the best point in their career. This is likely to be when you are on an upward trajectory in terms of research-related outputs, building collaborations and developing ambitious, robust and timely research plans.
The review process will consider your potential for developing competitive funding bids and the added value of additional time and resources the Dean’s Prize can offer. Successful candidates will likely have clear intellectual links to current Faculty members to benefit from appropriate mentorship, advice and support.
Support for health and care professionals
For practising health and care professionals, which may include but not be limited to, nurses, allied health professionals, medical doctors, dentists, clinical practitioners, social workers and social care workers, we will support a basic salary for a specified full-time equivalent (FTE), with the remaining FTE salary reflecting clinical or care duties by the most appropriate NHS partner of the Manchester Academic Health Science Centre (MAHSC) or other employee organisation.
Any clinical or care-related component of the salary needs to be agreed in principle by the relevant NHS Trust, MAHSC Partner or organisation before submission.
Support for medical doctors
For medical doctors, The University of Manchester will support a basic salary of up to 0.5 full-time equivalent (FTE) with the remaining 0.5 FTE covered by the most appropriate NHS partner of the Manchester Academic Health Science Centre (MAHSC). You will most likely be approaching or have just reached the end of your clinical specialist training and recognise the need for a further period of up to 24 months following completion of clinical speciality training to maximise your momentum for applications at an intermediate or clinician-scientist fellowship level.
For other health and care professionals, the FTE split can be discussed.
How to apply
When you're ready to apply, please download and complete the application form:
Please submit the form by email to FBMHfellowshipacademy@manchester.ac.uk by 3pm on Tuesday, 27 May 2025.
Dean's Prize information session
Catch up on our Dean's Prize information session:
Contact us
If you have any enquiries, please contact: