KitBoost: Enabling Early Career Researchers with Small Equipment

赫瑞瓦特大学在支持早期职业研究人员（ecr）方面取得了重大成就。2010年，我们是首批获得欧盟委员会“人力资源卓越研究”认证的英国机构之一，因为我们实施了《欧洲研究人员宪章》和《招聘行为准则》。最近，在2012年9月，我们已经入围了2012年泰晤士高等教育（the）奖的两个类别-“领导力发展杰出贡献”和“杰出支持早期职业研究人员”。这一认识主要是通过向环境研究中心提供高质量的机构一级发展活动，以及创造机会建立跨学科网络和联系，以增强其研究能力和影响。这些都是对支持ecr的学校层面举措的补充，例如，为旅行和参加会议/培训活动提供专用资金，为帮助新讲师找到他们的第一批研究学生提供奖学金。KitBoost将进一步推动这些举措，为ecr建立他们的研究事业所需的创业设施提供支持。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。跨越这些领域的大多数研究项目也为挑战主题做出了贡献，特别是“未来制造”、“能源”、“数字经济”和“医疗技术”。在准备提案的过程中，我们鼓励尽可能多的早期职业研究人员在EPSRC的职责范围内工作，明确确定具体的设备项目（低于10,000英镑，包括增值税），这将对他们的研究项目做出有价值的贡献。我们确定了近40名学术ecr，他们在研究小组中与许多相关的epsrc资助的研究协会的研究生一起工作。它们又确定了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；一份超过120个单独设备项目的清单，加上重复，总共有近250个单独的设备。在要求的625,000英镑（fEC）预算内，我们能够资助其中的一半以上。我们注意到，EPSRC可能愿意延长整体预算，因此对名单和个人进行了优先排序，以便我们能够非常迅速地响应所要求的资金水平，同时也可以积极迅速地响应更高水平的资金，而不会损害交付的时间表。

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.