NIHR Research Professorships Round 15

The NIHR Research Professorships aim to fund research leaders of the future to promote effective translation of research and strengthen health, public health and care research leadership at the highest academic levels.

The 5-year award allows outstanding academics of all professions to work at professorial level based at a higher education institution (HEI), in partnership with an NHS organisation or another provider of health, public health and/or care services.

The support offered includes:

• 3 support posts
• research costs
• a leadership and development programme.

Previous NIHR Research Professors include Professor Waljit Dhillo, Dean of the NIHR Academy and Professor Lucy Chappell, Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department of Health and Social Care and CEO of NIHR.

Successful awardees described the award as transformational within their discipline and for their career.

Strategic theme for this round

NIHR particularly wants to encourage applications from health and care professionals outside of medicine and dentistry.

Applications received under this Strategic Theme will still have to meet the same quality threshold required for funding but will be given priority if the number of fundable applications exceeds the maximum that can be funded.

Who can apply

HEIs, NHS organisations, or other providers of health, public health and care services based in England, can nominate health, public health and social care researchers and methodologists with an outstanding research record of clinical and applied health research and its effective translation for improved health and care.

Candidates must demonstrate they are on a steep career trajectory over the last 5-10 years and are on course to becoming an outstanding research leader.

It is acknowledged that different professions can be promoted to Chair level with different amounts of academic and clinical experience. To help address this and avoid potential disadvantage, applicants from a Health and Care Professional background (e.g. nurse, midwife, AHP, healthcare scientist, pharmacist, social care etc) can still apply if they have been in a Chair role for longer than 5 years (spending no more than 5 years at their current level of seniority still applies to all other levels e.g. Reader, Senior Lecturer etc).