KitBoost: Enabling Early Career Researchers with Small Equipment

赫瑞瓦特大学在支持其早期职业研究人员（ECR）方面取得了重大成就。在2010年，我们是第一批英国机构已被授予欧盟委员会的“人力资源卓越研究”认证，我们的研究人员和他们的招聘行为守则的欧洲宪章的实施。最近，在2012年9月，我们入围了泰晤士报高等教育（THE）2012年奖的两个类别-“领导力发展杰出贡献”和“早期职业研究人员杰出支持”。这种认可主要是通过在机构层面提供给ECR的发展活动的质量，以及创造建立跨学科的机会。学科网络和联系，以提高他们的研究能力和影响。这些总是补充学校层面的举措，支持ECR，包括例如获得专用资金的旅行和会议/培训活动出席，获得奖学金，以帮助新的讲师找到他们的第一个研究学生。KitBoost将进一步采取这些举措，通过建立一个推动的启动设施，ECR需要建立他们的研究生涯。支持的研究领域多种多样，包括催化，量子光学，水工程，微系统等国家能力主题。跨越这些大部分的研究计划也有助于挑战主题，特别是“制造未来”，“能源”，“数字经济”和“健康技术”。在准备提案时，我们鼓励尽可能多的在EPSRC职权范围内工作的早期职业研究人员明确确定具体的设备项目（包括增值税在内的10，000英镑以下），这将为他们的研究计划做出宝贵的贡献。我们在与许多相关的EPSRC资助的研究协会研究学生的研究小组中确定了近40个学术ECR。这些机构又确定了30多个研究方案，增加一些小型设备项目将使它们能够克服目前的限制;一份有120多个单独设备项目的清单，加上重复的项目，这一清单达到近250个单独的项目。在所要求的625，000英镑（fEC）预算内，我们将能够为其中的一半以上提供资金。我们注意到，EPSRC可能愿意在2020年之后延长该呼吁的总体预算，因此已经对名单和个人进行了优先排序，以便我们能够非常迅速地对所要求的资金水平做出反应，但也可以积极迅速地对更高水平的资金做出反应，而不会影响交付的时间表。

Heriot-Watt University has made significant achievements in supporting its Early Career Researchers (ECRs). In 2010, we were amongst the first UK institutions to have been awarded the European Commission 'HR Excellence in Research' accreditation for our implementation of the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for their Recruitment. More recently in September 2012 we have been shortlisted in two categories of the Times Higher Education (THE) 2012 Awards - 'Outstanding Contribution to Leadership Development' and 'Outstanding Support for Early Career Researchers'.This recognition has been predominantly through the quality of development activities at institutional level available to ECRs and the creation of opportunities to establish cross-disciplinary networks and connections to enhance their research capacity and impact. These always complement School-level initiatives which support ECRs including for example access to dedicated funds for travel and conference/training event attendance, access to Scholarships to assist new lecturers find their first research students.KitBoost will take these initiatives further by establishing a boost to the start-up facilities that ECRs require in establishing their research careers. The areas of research to supported are varied and include the National Capabilities Themes of Catalysis, Quantum optics, Water Engineering, Microsystems and many others. Cutting across these most of the research programmes also contribute to Challenge Themes, especially 'Manufacturing the Future', 'Energy', 'Digital Economy' and 'Healthcasre Technologies'.In preparing the proposal, we encouraged as many Early Career Researchers working in areas within EPSRC's remit as possible to explicitly identify specific items of equipment (under £10,000 including VAT) that would make a valuable contribution to their research programmes. We identified nearly 40 academic ECRs in working in research groups with many associated EPSRC-funded Research Associates research students. These in turn identified over 30 research programmes that the additional of a number of items of small equipment items would enable them to overcome current limitations; a list of over 120 separate equipment items and with repetitions this amounted to nearly 250 individual pieces. Within the requested budget of £625,000 (fEC) we would be able to fund just over half of these. We note EPSRC are potentially willing to extend the overall budget for the call after for and therefore have prioritised the list and individuals so that we could respond to funding at a the requested level very rapidly but could also respond positively and quickly to funding at a higher level without detriment to the timescale of delivery.