The BBSRC has launched another call for strategic Longer and Larger (sLoLa) grants for 2022/23, with a focus on frontier bioscience to address fundamental questions in biology.

The sLoLa mechanism is designed to support large, integrated programs of research over a longer timeframe. Proposals must clearly justify that the work requires a single larger scale award to be carried out. The proposal must demonstrate overall coherence, connectivity, coordination, and integration of the work to be carried out, to the extent that the work could not be undertaken through funding of separate smaller awards.

BBSRC encourages applicants to think carefully about the proposed research team to ensure that the best team has been selected and that they are properly equipped to deliver the proposed programme of work in a national context. Such a team will typically be multi-investigator, multi-institution, and/or multi-disciplinary. However, investigators (both PI and Co-I) based outside the UK are not permitted. BBSRC also encourages applicants to consider Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion when forming their research teams.

Principal Investigators are not required to have held similar-sized awards before – it is the whole proposed sLoLa team that should demonstrate competency to lead complex, multi-site projects.

BBSRC is planning to fund 3-5 projects of over £2M each, up to five years in duration. Proposals must be primarily within BBSRC’s remit.

There are three mandatory stages to the application process: registration, outline, and full stage. The aim of first step, the call registration, is to ensure all potential outlines are appropriately targeted to this call, to provide an early indication of the level of demand, and to allow institutional-level demand moderation steps to be taken if necessary. BBSRC will provide non-peer review feedback on the suitability of projects for the call, which will include details on: fit to call scope, justification for sLoLa, and eligibility (BBSRC remit and applicants). Please note that the feedback will be brief and will not include any indications of the proposals’ competitiveness.

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