IDAI Pump Prime Funding 2024-5
The Institute for Data and AI (IDAI ) is pleased to announce our second round of Pump-prime funding to support the development of innovative, interdisciplinary and high-impact research ideas.
About the funding
This opportunity will provide priming funds to support University of Birmingham researchers to explore new research questions across all colleges and disciplines, involving the principled use and the advancement of Data Science and AI methods.
Projects may, if appropriate, request time allocation from the Research Data Scientists (RDSci) and Research Software Engineer (RSE) teams from Advanced Research Computing, and these must be appropriately costed as further detailed below.
We welcome proposals from teams including collaborators who are local (intra-Birmingham) and external (national and international), though the project lead must be a University of Birmingham researcher.
- Total funding available: £100,000
- Max funding per project: £20,000
Aims of the funding
The funding aims to support work that will lead to the future external funding of innovative, high-impact research and long-term research collaborations.
Inclusivity
We especially encourage researchers from underrepresented groups to apply, unique perspectives are vital to inclusive research, and the Institute is committed to enabling researchers to innovate.
Who can apply
- All University of Birmingham research staff, who have not made use of Pump Prime funding previously, are eligible to apply.
- We particularly encourage early career researchers to apply.
- We invite interdisciplinary proposals from all Colleges.
- Projects ideas submitted for the funding must not currently or previously have had any other funding support in place.
- We encourage you to think imaginatively and submit proposals for innovative and high-impact pump-prime research projects. We look forward to receiving your applications!
Timeline and key information
Timeline and key information
Funding Call Open: 20 September 2024
Application Period:
- End date: 1 November 2024
- Duration: 6 weeks
Review Process:
- Start date: 4 November 2024
- End date: 29 November 2024
- Duration: 3-4 weeks
- Activity: Review by an interdisciplinary panel and operational/technical feasibility checks.
Award Announcement:
- Date: 2 December 2024
- Activity: Notification of successful applicants and publication on the Institute website.
Projects Start:
- Date: December 2024 (after announcements)
- Activity: Setup of projects, including meetings with the Institute Operations Team and relevant parties.
Key documents and application form
Key documents and application form
Before applying, please refer to the call particulars for full details and information:
To apply, please submit an application via the following Microsoft Form:
Costings template:
Accessible Word format of the application questions (For reference only, applications should be submitted via the form.):
If you are unsure of any aspect of your applications, please check our FAQ where you can find some of the questions we have been asked frequently, this will be updated as we get questions throughout the process so do check back.
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Check our FAQ’s to see if they cover your project queries:
Can we cover the costs of a University of Birmingham post-doc's time if their contract ends after July 2025?
Yes, as long as any future extension to their contract is not immediately/directly a result of the pump-priming funds. In other words, you could not utilise the pump prime funds to request or enable an extension within the funding period, or reasonably there after.
Are there flexible start and end dates than those advertised for project activity.
Yes- Projects can start later, although it is not advised to start much later than December, to give your project the greatest length of time to run.
Project funding ends 18 July 2025. Salary costs, requisitions (and receipting on orders) must be completed by this date. Project activity may continue after the funding ends - the aim of the funding is to kick start projects which will hopefully continue on to generate new collaborations, partnerships, funding applications etc.
I’d like to include the time of a Research Data Scientist, how do I do that?
- You must speak to one of the Research Data Scientists (RDSci) before including them in your project proposal and costing.
- Please include any RDSci costs in your application budget (template provided).
- RDSci time should be costed as a Grade 8, spine point 39, for the FTE and length of time discussed with the RDSci team.
- The easiest way to cost this time is to use a ‘Standalone Budget’ on Worktribe, to find the cost, and then include this figure (salary costs only) in the application budget template.
- As an indication, a 40% FTE Grade 8.39 Technician from 1 Feb to 31 July costs: £12,639.72.
Please note the following constraints due to RDSci team availability:
- The maximum length of time you can engage an RDSci for on the IIDSAI pump-priming project is 6 months.
- The earliest an RDSci can start on the project is 1 February 2025
- The maximum FTE you can engage an RDSci for is 40% (NB: this may is split over two people - 35% main data scientist and 5% project support data scientist. The second data scientist is always at 5% - so If you choose a lower percentage FTE e.g. 30%, this will be 25% main data scientist + 5% project support data scientist).
Can I request funding for consulting, grant writing, or other similar external expert/supplier fees?
Yes you can, but please be mindful to follow the University’s procurement policies and processes.
Can I use the funding to pay for a postdoc’s time at another institution or organisation?
This would very much depend on the circumstances. We would encourage you to explore expertise available to you within the University, we can provide advice and connect you with our IIDSAI network.
The agreements/contracts required to facilitate this, and the time needed to arrange, would likely not be feasible within the funding period.
Please contact Jessica Mylchreest, Head of Institute Operations (j.mylchreest@bham.ac.uk) if you would like to discuss a similar query.
Can I use the funding for consulting fees?
Yes, consulting fees can also be paid with the Pump Prime funding.
Utilising our Data Scientists for projects
Utilising our Data Scientists for projects
Funding can be used for Research Data Scientist, or Advanced Research Computing Research Software Engineer’s time. If you intend to include Research Data Scientist support in your application, you must have spoken to the team prior to submitting your application.
Their expertise could be used for:
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Advanced Analytics: statistical analysis, machine learning, and deep learning. Developing predictive models, clustering, dimensionality reduction, and the implementation of neural networks. Developing predictive models, clustering, dimensionality reduction, and the implementation of neural networks.
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Textual Analysis: natural language processing.
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Image Analysis: covering a range of applications, including medical images such as microscopy, MEG and fMRI data.
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Data Visualization: including interactive dashboards to facilitate a deeper understanding of your data.
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Data Collection and Extraction: data extraction and scraping from diverse sources, including documents, APIs, and web pages.
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Data Preparation: cleaning and transforming raw data into analysis-ready datasets.
Previous successful projects
Previous successful projects
Hear from some of our first cohort of project teams about what they were able to accomplish with their funding:
Dedicated support from RDSci and operations, forming the basis for future grants and publication
The pump-priming funding allowed me to engage a dedicated computational scientist who played a crucial role in kickstarting the project. Their expertise facilitated the development of a workflow pipeline that will serve as the foundation for our future project grant and publication. I strongly encourage others to apply for this opportunity if they require computational or AI support. IIDSAI team is exceptional, bringing together diverse expertise and a collaborative spirit that can help transform your project ideas into reality.
From initial ideas to a developed project exploring the intersection of the human brain and artificial neural networks
The Pump Prime Funding provided a valuable opportunity for our team to advance a preliminary idea into a more developed project. We are deeply grateful for this support, without which continuing and completing our research would have been impossible. The funding allowed us to engage a data scientist, whose contributions were critical to the project’s success. It also facilitated the formation of an interdisciplinary team of computer scientists and neuroscientists, enabling us to explore interesting and challenging problems at the intersection of the human brain and artificial neural networks. This collaboration has prepared us for a larger interdisciplinary grant application and paper submission.
Recruiting a research associate for a framework and going on to publish
“This opportunity allowed us to recruit a research associate for the duration of the project to better formalise and deploy a novel framework for process parameter optimisation in additive manufacturing based on physics-informed reinforcement learning. This collaboration has led to the work being published in Scripta Materialia, one of the top journals in materials science.”
Biodiversity research, EU grant applications and dedicated collaboration
“The pump prime funding enabled us to explore novel approaches to biodiversity forecasting, paving the way to EU grant applications. Collaborating with the research fellows at the Institute was a great opportunity, they are competent and dedicated to the projects.”
An interdisciplinary team, further grant applications and research for improving rates of early diagnosis of lung cancer
“The pump prime funding has enabled us to launch a wide repertoire of research seeking to improve rates of early diagnosis of lung cancer; including qualitative, systematic review, and natural language processing strands. The funding has fostered development of an interdisciplinary team of clinicians, qualitative researchers, and data scientists, and has led to the opportunity to apply for a wider programme grant focused on designing and evaluating an intervention to improve early diagnosis of incidentally identifiable cancers in the UK more widely.”
Securing data and setting up a public database
“Using these funds, we were able to set up a public-database of single molecule tracking microscopy data. This allows users to store and share their data as well as compare the similarity of molecular diffusion behaviour in cells between conditions e.g. molecule type, cell type or species. We were also able to acquire experimental single-molecule microscopy data to begin to populate the database.”
For all enquiries, please contact, Elizabeth Oliver, Research Engagement Support Officer, E.a.oliver@bham.ac.uk.