Queen's University EPSRC Early Career Equipment Block Grant Investment

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The context:Queen's values highly its Early Career Researchers (ECRs). We have invested in a programme of support to attract in the best talent and to support them throughout their careers beginning with providing a start-up grant to purchase equipment and to travel to network and develop their own collaborations both in the UK and overseas. Mentoring is critical in maximising outputs and provide a pathway to career development. Queen's Research and Enterprise offers support to navigate the complex funding terrain and assist in developing applications. Queen's has led the UK in First Grant awards with some 36 awards (£3.5M) from 2009. Underpinning our success is continued investment in workhorse and high-end equipment without which our ambitions to be a UK and world-leader for high impact research will not be realised. As part of Queen's "Vision 2020" Strategy we have actioned a strategic growth-for-the future plan having invested some £350M in our built environment and a further £350M planned in the coming five years. In parallel, we have entered into a new research strategy investment phase to strategically target research equipment of highest importance and of widest-use. Queen's has in place "Pioneer Research Programmes" (PRPs) research hubs that represent interdisciplinary entities to tackle (i) long-term energy security (ii) development of materials and application of engineering for medicine (iii) radiation treatment of cancer and (iv) autonomous manufacturing. To complement this our Global Research Institute (GRI) ECIT who's mission is to meet the challenges of collecting, storing and securing the torrent of digital information society now generates. Our ECRs have membership of one or more PRPs or the GRI through which they engage with fellow researchers to broaden their horizons and get to grips with the changing research scene by taking them out of their "silos" and meet head on the Industrial Strategy Challenges.Our aims and objectives:Continuous growth and development of our equipment base is critical in realising our ambition to take more of our research to an internationally competitive level by (i) increasing our capability of achieving 4* outputs, (ii) boosting competitive bidding for research grants, including the New Investigator Award (iii) attracting the best researchers from the UK and overseas. This will contribute to making the UK the best place in the world to research, discover and innovate and project further our presence on the global stage. High quality equipment will specifically support ECRs in generating e.g., initial study data to place them in a competitive position to win their New Investigator Award. This first step will initiate the legacy of research outcomes with follow on funding including e.g., Fellowships as a mechanism to accelerate their careers. In line with our ambition to engage on the global stage our ECRs will be supported to apply and win international research awards (USA-Ireland, GCRF, Newton and the EPSRC-NSF/SFI Lead Agreement).Potential applications and benefits:The ECRS will be supported by their Academic Mentors and Queen's Research and Enterprise Directorate's; Business Alliance, Research Development and Commercialisation teams. The teams will facilitate the forging of links with industry to accelerate and maximise impact. Queens has strategic international and UK-based partnerships with industry including; Thales, Huawei, Bombardier, Seagate, Kyocera [AVX Ltd) and FP McCann. The multi-disciplinary research of our ECRs in e.g.; optimisation systems, failure analysis, future manufacturing, advanced composites, chemical production, clean energy, machine learning and intelligent infrastructure composites, chemical production, clean energy, machine learning and intelligent infrastructure will contribute to the sustainable growth.