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Funding research:

Professorial fellowships

The call for proposals is closed

Next proposal deadline: 2010 TBC

Aimed at

World-class scientists who are already recognised at an international level as outstanding researchers with the potential to use a fellowship to open up dramatic and novel lines of work in UK bioscience.

Nature of award

Awards are for 5 years, and include a research support grant to cover costs of the research programme.

Research areas

For 2010 we plan to award 1 Diamond Professorial Fellowship located in the new Research Complex at Harwell. Further details, including proposal procedure, can be found in the downloads section.

How to apply

Submit a proposal electronically via the Joint Electronic Submissions (Je-S) system with the following mandatory attachments:

• CV (see downloads section)
  You should complete the standard CV template. We do not accept stand alone CVs.
• Case for support
• List of publications
• Head of department statement
• Justification of resources
• Impact plan

Fellowships are awarded under full economic costing (fEC).

You should submit costed research support grant proposals in line with the Grants Guide.

Detailed guidance on how to complete proposal forms and proposal attachments can be found on the Je-S system and in the Fellowships Handbook that is available in the Downloads section.

We do not accept late proposals. We recommend proposals are submitted 1 week before the proposal deadline.

Case study

First ever BBSRC Diamond Professorial Fellow

Professor So Iwata, from Imperial College London, became the first ever Diamond Fellow in 2009 with an award of over £1.5 million to carry out full-time research over 5 years. He will use the high quality x-rays produced by the Diamond Light Source (DLS), adjacent to the new Research Complex at Harwell (RCaH) to study the structure of human cell membrane transporters to provide a basic understanding of life at the molecular level and help advances in medicine and pharmacology.

So Iwata's research supported by BBSRC will focus on structure determination of mammalian solute carriers and their orthologues including facilitative GLUT transporter family (SLC2), the bicarbonate transporter family (SLC4), the sodium/proton exchanger family (SLC9), the sodium bile salt cotransport family (SLC10) and the proton oligopeptide cotransporter family (SLC15). This research will combine structural biology, molecular biology and computer simulations to understand their molecular transport mechanisms. To achieve these objectives, a new laboratory for transporter purification and characterisation will be set up at RCaH. Good access to DLS is one of the keys for successful determination of these transporter structures. DLS also accommodates the Membrane Protein Laboratory for high throughput membrane protein crystallisation, where So Iwata is the director.

Professor Iwata said: “DIAMOND LIGHT SOURCE is certainly one of the best synchrotron radiation facilities in the world… I really want to solve as many as possible, membrane transporter structures, but at the same time I want to be a link between DIAMOND LIGHT SOURCE and the life science community which is largely supported by BBSRC.”

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