Early Career Collaboration Grants

The Secretariat has received the backing of the Presidents for a new version of a proposal, made at the 2021 Senior Officers’ Meeting, aimed at fostering research links between IARU members.

Encouraging research collaboration between universities is a key part of IARU’s mission, but only the Ageing, Longevity & Health Initiative is mainly focused on research at the moment. A tremendous amount of joint research is, of course, being carried out between IARU members outside of IARU, but in 2021 the Senior Officers agreed that there was an opportunity for IARU to have a real impact with a carefully targeted initiative. In light of the serious difficulties younger researchers had encountered in trying to build their global networks during the pan- demic, it was decided to focus that initiative on early-career researchers.

Under the collaboration grant scheme, researchers will be able to apply for up to US$5,000 to help meet the costs of a short-term stay at another IARU university as part of a new or ex- isting research collaboration between their home and host university. Applicants will be asked to consider how their trip would support additional collaborative links between the two insti- tutions. The Presidents recommended that the proposal be focused on early-career academics as a way of encouraging longer-term ties between IARU members, and that the allocated funding be doubled to $40,000 in its first year.

The revised proposal was finalised with the Senior Officers in Oxford and the first call for applications will be launched in 2023.