There is normally no problem in recruiting an international candidate as long as there is no increase in budget required from NWS for this and you should explain how the budget for international students will be managed. Depending on the subject area, the student may be required to apply to the Academic Technology Approval Scheme (ATAS). You should raise this during your recruitment process as there are some cases in which this may not be possible.

Once an agreement is in place the budget cannot be increased, but it can be reduced. If you anticipate recruiting an international candidate then you can include contributions to overseas tuition fees in your costs, providing the total budget requested from NWS is not more than £145,000.

Yes, multiple partners can submit a joint application which should be led from a UK University, and can include a range of project partners (e.g. additional universities, BGS, NNL, International organisations, industry). The agreement will only be between NWS and the lead university. Any additional collaborators will need to have an agreement with the lead university.

No, we accept multiple applications per university and supervisors can be part of more than one submission. There is no maximum number of awards per university or supervisor.

Further details on how to complete the budget part of the application can be found in the submission guidance. Please refer to the grant agreement template for a list of excluded costs.

We anticipate around 8-10 projects will be funded, depending on the level of co-funding identified. For information, current co-funding levels are, on average, at approximately 50 % funding from NWS and 50 % funding from other sources.

Yes, co-funding and in-kind contributions are strongly encouraged and will be scored favourably. Please outline these clearly in the application.

All evaluations are completed by NWS against the criteria outlined in the guidance document. We recommend ensuring you cover the following areas in particular as, based on previous years, these are sometimes missed out; ensure alignment to the brief or S&T plan is thoroughly described, ensure risks and mitigation measures are identified, outline how skills of the wider supervisory team will be developed through the project, and identify any co-funding or in-kind contributions associated with the project.

Once the applications are scored, awards are made to the highest scoring applications. If there are more projects than the budget allows for then awards will be made based on creating a strategic balance across discipline areas.