Frequently Asked Questions

We aim to provide researchers with funding options that collectively represent all stages of the career spectrum. Please see below for a list of our grant schemes and their respective eligibility criteria: 

• PhD Studentships – these can be costed through our Research Innovation Awards and Transformational Impact Awards. 
• Career Acceleration Fellowship – you can apply for this scheme if you are at least in the final year of your PhD and have at most 5 years post-doctoral experience (measured from 1st October of the year you are applying). 
• Research Innovation Awards and Transformational Impact Awards – if you hold a tenured or tenure-track academic position (or, if you’re a clinician, an honorary academic contract at a recognised academic institution), with over 5 years post-doctoral experience, you’re eligible to apply for either our Research Innovation Award, or for larger-scale support, our Transformational Impact Award. Clinicians that have completed a PhD with less than 5 years post-doctoral experience are eligible to apply as a Lead Applicant on our Research Innovation Awards.
• Clinical PhD Studentships – if you’re a clinician wanting to apply for a PhD studentship, you can apply through the Joint MRC-Prostate Cancer UK Clinical Research Training Fellowship Award. 

We welcome proposals from academics and clinicians not currently working on prostate cancer. However, in such cases, an expert from the prostate cancer research field should be named as a Joint-Lead Applicant or Co-Applicant on your proposal.

Yes. However, you cannot request a salary. In addition, you would need to demonstrate how you plan to sufficiently drive the Fellowship grant alongside your lecturing commitments, as well as provide strong rationale as to how the award would accelerate your career development.

Overall time working as a post-doctoral researcher, as opposed to time since completion of PhD. Therefore, career breaks and absences are not included. In general, this is measured from 1st October of the year of the funding call.

There is no restriction to the number of internationally based team members that can be included on your grant, provided that the research is predominantly conducted in the UK and is led by a UK-based researcher. The cost of research at the institutes of international collaborators can also be requested. For further details, please see our Finance Guidance.

Our funded grants can be found on our Research we Fund webpage.

For our open funding calls, please visit our Funding Opportunities webpage. For guidance on starting an application on our online CC Grant Tracker system, please download this guidance document.

This information can be found on our Finance Guidance webpage.

If you are conducting clinical research, you are required to complete the SoECAT form. This tool provides a standardised approach for attributing the costs of health and social care research and development (AcoRD) across England. Further guidance on how to complete the SoECAT form can be fond in our funding scheme guidelines.

If you are applying to a funding scheme that employs a two-stage application process, you are not required to submit a SoECAT form at the Expression of Interest stage.

All necessary regulatory approvals and licences for the project must be in place before the corresponding work can commence. In most instances, approvals and licences should be in place before the grant begins, and so should not be included within the project schedule/Gantt chart. Some (clinical approvals and licences) may not require specific approvals until the later years of the project, and in this instance, it is permissible for the approvals to be obtained at the relevant time. 
 
If approvals/licences have already been obtained, please attach the corresponding letters in the relevant section of the application form (MS Word or PDF only). We only require the title/approval page(s) to be uploaded. Please do not upload the entire document.  If submissions are in process, please indicate the status of the application(s) and when a final decision is expected. If approvals are obtained after the submission deadline, please inform the Research Team immediately, at [email protected]

If you have less than 5 years post-doctoral experience (non-clinical research), you can apply for a Career Acceleration Fellowship Award, which supports the salary of the lead applicant. If you have between 5-10 years post-doctoral experience or are a clinician with 0-5 years' experience, we are prepared to consider your salary as a lead applicant of a Research Innovation Award, provided: 

• A senior academic or clinician (usually the research group head) is named on the application as a joint-lead applicant or co-Applicant; 
• you will truly be leading the research and will spend a minimum of 80% FTE on the funded project; 
• a detailed justification is provided, explaining how the salary support, and the research funding applied for, will support your career progression by achieving independence by the end of the project;  
• a statement is provided from an appropriate authority at the host institution, detailing how you will be supported by the institute at the end of the project. 

It is permissible to include the salary costs for staff positions that would be directly employed through your grant. This includes, but is not restricted to: postdoctoral researchers, graduate research assistants, technicians, research nurses or anyone else who would be employed directly on the project. 
 
Grants must not be used for off-setting the salary of any applicant (e.g. Lead or Joint-Lead Applicant) or participant (e.g. Co-Applicants or Collaborators) whose salary is supported from core institution funds, or by another external source such as a fellowship.  If specialist expertise is required, for instance a statistician or a health economist etc., then you may include a reasonable allocation in salaries for the proportion of their time that would be committed to the grant, as long as suitable justification is provided. 
 
For further information, please see the ‘Staff & Employment Costs’ section of our Finance Guidance.

Lead Applicants who are already in receipt of funding from Prostate Cancer UK are still eligible to apply to our grant calls . Applicants should however make a clear case as to why they are the most appropriate person to lead the proposal and provide reassurance that they will have sufficient time to oversee the delivery of the project. We will check whether the proposed time commitments towards the project would be feasible (for example, a 0.5 FTE commitment from someone already committing 1.0FTE on an existing grant would clearly not be feasible).

Applicants who have not been successful may reapply to future grant rounds as long as the proposal is sufficiently different from the original application (unless new data relevant to the proposal has come to light since the previous submission) AND all feedback points provided by the scientific committee are sufficiently addressed.

When a funding call has closed, the applications submitted to us undergo a review process. This involves peer and lay review, with recommendations for shortlisting and funding provided by our Research Advisory Committee. As a member of the Association of Medical Research Charities, we follow their principles of peer review.

Shortlisted applicants can have the opportunity to respond to reviewer comments and those applying for Fellowships may be invited for interview. The specific process an application undergoes will depend on the type of grant applied for and will be detailed in the guidance notes for the corresponding funding call.

Every member of our Research Advisory Committee has signed a terms of reference and confidentiality agreement. External peer reviewers assessing applications must also agree to a code of conduct before they can be granted access to the application documentation, with the exception of the application abstract which is provided to help potential peer reviewers decide whether they are suitable to give a thorough assessment.

Following assessment from our Research Advisory Committee, applicants will be notified by e-mail as to whether they have been successful in obtaining funding. All applicants receive detailed feedback on their application. Successful applicants will then be issued a contract based on our standard Terms and Conditions, along with a starter pack for new grant holders providing useful information regarding the management of their grant.

You can get in touch with our Research Team at [email protected]