These initiatives have contributed to our outstanding success in supporting researchers of all career stages in obtaining prestigious personal fellowship support. During the last 5 years 74 junior clinical academics were awarded externally funded Research Training Fellowships (e.g. MRC, Wellcome Trust, NIHR, CRUK, BHF, Versus Arthritis), 22 received clinician scientist fellowships and 5 senior clinical fellowships. Similarly, 20 early career basic science researchers succeeded in securing prestigious career development awards from the Wellcome Trust, BBSRC, and Royal Society amongst others and 7 secured a senior research fellowship.
The success of our clinical collaborations is reflected by our highly respected integrated clinical academic training pathway that has been commended by the NIHR, and Birmingham is in the top 25% of institutions for NIHR-funded training posts. Our Academic Foundation programme has established a reputation for excellence; 32% of applicants come from other universities and 98% of appointees reported Birmingham as their first choice.
Success is demonstrated by 75% of our Academic Clinical Fellows progressing to competitively funded personal fellowships (national average 35%) and overall success from all our aspirant clinical research fellows exceeds 50%, one of the highest rates in the country. This has resulted in 90% of all our clinical research fellows undertaking PhD/MD training receiving competitive fellowship funding.