Funding opportunity

Funding opportunity: DARE UK Transformational Programme: core components

Apply for funding to transition minimum viable product capabilities to production-ready reference implementations, ready for testing and adoption in real-world research settings by Trusted Research Environments (TREs).

You must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for UK Research and Innovation funding.

You must:

The full economic cost (FEC) of your project can be up to £6,343,750. UKRI will fund 80% of the FEC.

We anticipate a single collaborative bid addressing the themes in this funding opportunity.

Who can apply

You can only apply for this funding opportunity if we have invited you to do so following a successful project in the 2023 Data and Analytics Research Environments (DARE UK) Driver Projects funding opportunity. This funding opportunity is intended to advance research previously funded through the 2023 DARE UK Driver Projects funding opportunity, specifically in one of the three themes in scope for this opportunity.

Before applying for funding, check the Eligibility of your organisation.

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has introduced new role types for funding opportunities being run on the new UKRI Funding Service.

For full details, visit Eligibility as an individual.

Who is eligible to apply

To be eligible to apply for this funding opportunity you must:

  • be employed by an eligible research organisation
  • show that you will direct the project and be actively engaged in the work
  • have the relevant expertise and experience to lead or contribute to advancing the federation of UK TREs and sensitive data research
  • meet individual eligibility requirements

To be eligible to apply, you must also have previously received funding via the 2023 DARE UK Driver Projects to inform design of cross-council UK Trusted Research Environments (TREs) funding opportunity as the project lead.

Changes to the original DARE UK project lead

A different project lead may be named if deemed more appropriate to advance the project. The original project lead must then be named as project co-lead. This arrangement would need to be justified in the ‘Applicant and team capability to deliver’ section.

To be eligible to apply, you must also have delivered work as part of the 2023 DARE UK Driver Projects to inform design of cross-council TREs funding opportunity that aligns specifically with one of the three themes in the scope of this opportunity:

  • Theme 1: Federated analysis
  • Theme 2: AI and semi-automated output checking
  • Theme 3: TRE reference architecture and implementations

For applicants who do not have a contract of employment for the duration of the proposed project, by submitting an application, the research organisation is confirming that if it is successful, contracts will be extended beyond the end date of the project.

Host research organisations

The application must be from a partnership of organisations.

For administrative purposes it is necessary to identify a single project lead who must be affiliated with the lead research organisation.

However, the balance of activity and leadership across the participants and partner organisations can be equally shared if desirable. What is critical is for the approach to leadership and decision making across multiple organisations to be clearly specified where applicable.

Who is not eligible to apply

If you are not employed by an eligible research organisation (for example, industry, company or charity) you are not eligible to lead or co-lead an application, however you can contribute as a project partner or subcontractor instead.

You are not eligible to apply for this funding opportunity as a project lead if you are based at an international research organisation. However, you should note this does not include Medical Research Council (MRC) Unit The Gambia or MRC/UVRI Uganda Research Unit at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine that are eligible to apply as project lead. Before applying for funding, check the Eligibility of your organisation.

International applicants

You can include international applicants as project co-leads (international), where they will make a major intellectual contribution to the design or conduct of the project. The contribution and added value to the research collaboration. You must justify in your application why their expertise is required and to provide clear indicators of commitment to delivering the DARE UK vision, see ‘Applicant and team capability to deliver’.

Equality, diversity and inclusion

We are committed to achieving equality of opportunity for all funding applicants. We encourage applications from a diverse range of researchers.

We support people to work in a way that suits their personal circumstances. This includes:

  • career breaks
  • support for people with caring responsibilities
  • flexible working
  • alternative working patterns

Find out more about equality, diversity and inclusion at UKRI.

You are encouraged to leverage the full strengths of the UK’s diverse research and innovation community from the earliest stages of assembling your teams through to the delivery of awarded projects.

Consideration of equality, diversity and inclusion is important for all applications to MRC for funding, but particular care should be taken for projects taking a team science approach involving multiple co-applicants.

What we're looking for

Aim

The main objective of this funding opportunity is to support the transition and integration of solutions developed as part of the 2023 DARE UK Driver Projects to production-ready reference implementations, ready for testing and adoption in real-world research settings by secure UK Trusted Research Environments (TREs). Solutions developed will be usable and deployable, including taking into consideration the requirements for deployment in TREs accredited by the UK Statistics Authority to use the Digital Economy Act (DEA) as a legal gateway to facilitate access to data for research use.

We anticipate a single multi-institutional collaborative bid addressing the themes described later in this funding opportunity.

As part of DARE UK Phase 2, these solutions have been identified as core components required to support federation capabilities across the UK TRE ecosystem. These core components are briefly described below.

Federated analysis across multiple TRE environments, building on the DARE UK TELEPORT (connecting researchers to big data at light speed) Driver Project, including:

  • parallel access to data in multiple physically separated environments (TREs)
  • enabling researchers to access and view data within different TREs via a single interface

Federated analysis through sending algorithms to the data, building on the DARE UK TRE-FX (delivering a federated network of trusted research environments to enable safe data analytics) Driver Project, including:

  • sending complex algorithms to data across physically separated environments (TREs), enabling researchers to run analysis against data within different TREs without seeing the underlying row level data

AI and semi-automated output checking, building on the DARE UK SACRO Driver Project to enhance:

  • TRE disclosure control capabilities through semi-automated tooling
  • testing and incorporating AI/ML model recommendations to enhance TRE capabilities to support AI/ML model training on sensitive data and trained model disclosure control

TRE reference architecture and implementations, building on the DARE UK SATRE Driver Project to:

  • develop ‘infrastructure-as-code’ versions of the SATRE specification to enable automated deployment of software-defined TREs
  • extend the specification to include the new capabilities as the UK TRE ecosystem continues to evolve and enhance the SATRE specification user experience and TRE evaluation process

Over the course of DARE UK Phase 2 (2024 – 2027) this work will create the documentation, processes, training resources, and support mechanisms necessary to deploy these solutions and standards into genuine production environments (including DEA-accredited TREs). This work will lay the technical and information governance foundations for real-world cross domain research projects to trial the solutions in earnest at a later stage in DARE UK Phase 2.

An information pack will be provided, as well as additional information session(s) scheduled, to provide context and clarity on the overall programme of work for DARE UK Phase 2 prior to the closing date to ensure all applicants understand the overall context of Phase 2 and how this funding opportunity fits within the wider programme of work.

Scope

The DARE UK programme is charged with designing and delivering a coordinated and trustworthy national sensitive data research infrastructure to support cross-domain research for public good, by supporting the development and maintenance of a federation of secure services to accelerate research with sensitive data. The DARE UK Phase 1 Driver Projects concluded in October 2023. Each of these projects explored a specific component or aspect of a federated network of typically cloud-based TREs.

This investment will mature core components to underpin progress towards an increasingly federated network of TREs across the UK data research ecosystem, maturing from minimum viable products (MVPs) to production-ready reference implementations ready for further adoption and real-world validation by UK TREs (including DEA-accredited TREs) and researchers.

Alongside software, successful projects will create the documentation, processes, training resources and support mechanisms necessary to facilitate the adoption, deployment, configuration and operation of these core components in genuine production environments.

This funding opportunity has three specific themes and one cross-cutting theme. The application must address all themes; each core component must be reflected in the specific theme it is primarily aligned with and appropriately reflected in the cross-cutting theme. The three specific themes are as follows.

Theme 1: Federated analysis

This theme builds on the work of the TELEPORT and TRE-FX projects.

The project will mature software components which enable the execution of analysis across data resources held in physically or organisationally separated TREs. Analysis ‘queries’ may be fully encapsulated in the objects exchanged between TREs or may require the introduction of more complex analytical software from additional third-party software services.

The project must demonstrate how their solutions mitigate any additional cyber security and information governance risks arising from the federated environment. Ideally, projects will streamline information governance processes by either removing the need for row level data access and ensuring the appropriate governance authorities are comfortable that the approach is considered ‘business as usual’ (or both), fitting within existing information governance framework(s).

As a measure of success, researchers will be able to execute rapid analysis of distributed data by sending algorithms to remote, disparate datasets without the need for data to be marshalled in advance or log into a single TRE and access (pre-approved) data from many other TREs or both.

Where additional third-party software services are involved, researchers will be able to upload complex analysis workflows to appropriate hosting services and then be able to invoke these workflows from jobs submitted to one or more remote TREs.

Methodologies developed must be viable for deployment, including in DEA accredited TREs.

Theme 2: AI and semi-automated output checking

This theme builds on the work of the Semi-Automated Checking of Research Outputs (SACRO) project.

The project will mature software components which enhance TRE disclosure control capabilities through semi-automated tooling, as well as testing and incorporating AI and machine learning model recommendations to support the safe ‘release’ of models trained on sensitive data.

As a measure of success, researchers will receive research outputs with improved wait times for successful disclosure control and increasingly be able to train and export AI models safely and efficiently from TREs while maintaining privacy protection of the data on which the model has been trained.

UK TREs will increasingly test and adopt this semi-automated disclosure control toolkit to support safe, efficient sensitive data research while relieving the administrative overhead on TRE output checking staff. Methodologies developed must be viable for deployment, including in DEA accredited TREs.

Theme 3: TRE reference architecture and implementations

This theme builds on the work of the Standardised Architecture for Trusted Research Environments (SATRE) project.

The project will develop ‘infrastructure-as-code’ (ideally platform agnostic) versions of the SATRE specification to enable automated deployment of software-defined TREs. It will extend the specification to include new federation capabilities developed through DARE UK (such as those developed in Phase 1) or out with the programme as part of the UK Trusted Research Environment (TRE) ecosystem, iteratively refine the SATRE specification as the ecosystem develops (for example incorporating the work as described in Themes 1 and 2) and enhance the SATRE TRE evaluation process to support ease of benchmarking against the specification.

As a measure of success, researchers will have greater transparency across the UK TRE ecosystem in terms of the availability and quality of TRE services, a better understanding of the maturity of those services, and a more consistent user experience when working across TRE services in the UK.

UK (and international) TREs will increasingly evaluate themselves against the SATRE specification and the UK sensitive data research community will actively engage with maintaining the specification as the TRE ecosystem evolves. Methodologies developed must be viable for deployment, including in DEA-accredited TREs.

Cross-cutting theme: Integration of core components

This theme builds on the previous work of the TELEPORT, TRE-FX, SACRO and SATRE projects, and is intended to support the technical integration across the specific themes outlined above.

Each of the core components is focused on developing or enhancing a specific capability towards a federated landscape of TREs, each providing a piece of the overall puzzle. This cross-cutting theme will develop the interoperability ‘glue’ between core components, supporting the integration and testing of these core components as a technically interoperable set of capabilities.

This will enable the successful applicants to collaborate in assembling these core components with a dedicated focus on the interoperability layer between their core components. As such, the applicants are invited to work together to put in a joint application under this cross-cutting theme that aligns with and compliments their individual core component programme of work while ensuring technical interoperability between them.

The funded project will be a collaboration of work in Phase 2 of the DARE UK programme ensuring shared sight and understanding of the progress and direction of travel of each theme. This funding opportunity will support activities in maturing each individual component as outlined above and support the development of technical interoperability between components in Phase 2 of the DARE UK programme.

Successful applicants will be expected to:

  • collaboratively work as part of the DARE UK programme to deliver against the objectives of Phase 2 of the programme
  • develop a management framework guiding this multi-institutional, collaborative application
  • collaboratively work with UK TREs to test and ensure solutions are widely deployable (including by DEA-accredited TREs)
  • collaboratively work with researchers across disciplines, delivering real-world exemplar research projects using the solutions in their research, these research projects may be within or outwith the DARE UK programme
  • adhere to the Five Safes Framework
  • embed a public involvement and engagement (PIE) workstream in their programmes of work
  • include a workstream addressing data governance, ethical and legal considerations relevant to their work
  • work with and as part of DARE UK community groups, other community-led groups where appropriate or both
  • support cross domain data types
  • include a workstream on broad promotion and adoption of solutions, beyond the DARE UK programme itself
  • work across the other core component teams to ensure interoperability and leverage off each other’s expertise
  • engage and work with relevant industry stakeholders and/or partners where applicable given their roles as: users of TRE services, service providers contributing to common standards, and ensuring their products and/or services adhere to those standards, service providers supplying products and/or services to TREs, innovators working with TREs to develop new products and/or services

Collaboration with the DARE UK programme and wider ecosystem

The successful project will be expected to collaborate on key aspects of federation interoperability, including but not limited to:

  • inter-TRE data exchange formats based on standards
  • a common approach to inter-TRE user, data and project registration
  • a common technical architecture or framework for cross-domain inter-TRE federation in the UK
  • a common picture for intra-TRE capabilities required to support cross-domain inter-TRE federation in the UK, including emerging needs and gaps

Invited applicants will be sent an information pack with more details.

Public Involvement and Engagement (PIE)

The application should include a public-friendly summary that includes a description of the planned public benefits of the project, as well as an explicit and comprehensive workstream on PIE according to the guidelines set out in the DARE UK PIE guidelines document (PDF, 694KB). Engagement with external bodies representing public voices is strongly encouraged.

Successful applicants will be expected to deliver on the following requirements for their project:

PIE roles and responsibilities

Your PIE roles and responsibilities related to the PIE lead, must integrate a dedicated PIE lead into the project team it must also involve members of the public in the project delivery team if appropriate in the delivery meetings, strategic proceedings and decision making processes.

PIE strategies and activities

Your PIE strategies and activities related to project timeline integration, must:

  • ensure that the project plan (in the ‘Approach’ section of the application) fully integrates PIE activities
  • highlight time points where PIE insights can shape the next stages of project development

Your PIE strategies and activities related to diverse representation, must:

  • engage members of the public who reflect a wide demographic spectrum, please see DARE UK PIE Guidelines for more details
  • have access to the public participants involved and be able to reach them to fulfil all initial, midway, and post-delivery reporting and evaluation requirements, particularly where a third-party agency or consultant is commissioned to support this requirement

Your PIE strategies and activities related to feedback mechanism(s), must:

  • establish a clear and robust mechanism(s) for collecting feedback from public participants, with assessments possible before, midway through, and after the project
  • prepare and be available for a possible PIE evaluation after project delivery

Your PIE strategies and activities related to key performance indicators (KPIs), must:

  • set out PIE measurement indices at the start of the project and capture KPI data throughout PIE activities
  • focus on what you want to measure and why, and connect these KPIs to the established reporting requirements
  • include processes and documents to track and record demographic and engagement information about your public participants

Your PIE strategies and activities related to PIE planning and reporting requirements, must:

The funded project will be expected to collaborate as a collective PIE programme of work in ‘Phase 2’ of the DARE UK programme ensuring shared sight and understanding of the progress and direction of travel of each project’s PIE workstream.

Collaboration, governance and reporting

As part of the wider DARE UK programme in ‘Phase 2’, successful applicants will be expected to:

  • develop a management framework guiding this multi-institutional, collaborative application
  • work with the DARE UK delivery team to provide progress updates via regular meetings and reporting (including PIE activities)
  • collaborate on the development of engaging communications around their projects (including PIE activities)
  • give public-friendly presentations on their projects (including PIE activities) at events and conferences where appropriate (for example public webinars)
  • work with the DARE UK delivery team to amplify project and PIE-specific communications content
  • co-develop with the DARE UK delivery team summary reports (including PIE-specific reports) at the end of ‘Phase 2’ (including self-evaluation and lessons learnt)
  • commit to docking into DARE UK governance and delivery oversight structures, which will be defined collaboratively between the DARE UK delivery team and the successful applicants prior to projects starting

Legal, ethical and governance aspects

Each application should include an explicit workstream on the legal, ethical and governance aspects of their work. Engagement with appropriate UK-wide data governance bodies is strongly encouraged, where appropriate this will be facilitated by the DARE UK Delivery Team.

Duration

The duration of this award is 24 months. Your project must start no later than March 2025.

All awards must end by 31 March 2027.

Funding available

Your project can be funded up to a maximum of £6,343,750 full economic costing (FEC).

We will fund 80% of FEC and 100% of permitted exceptions.

Your application must be for an amount that:

  • is appropriate to the project
  • you can justify in order to deliver the objectives of the proposed research

Within your budget you must include £780,000 (100% FEC) to address the integration of core components (cross-cutting theme), this must be identified explicitly within your resources and cost breakdown as ‘integration of core components’.

The application will be required to demonstrate the following spend profile (100% FEC):

  • FY 25/26: no more than £3,093,750
  • FY 26/27: no more than £2,250,000

Underspend from each financial year cannot be carried forward to the following year.

What we will fund

You can request funding for costs such as:

  • a contribution to the salary of the project lead and co-leads
  • support for other posts such as research and technical staff
  • research consumables, including cloud computing
  • equipment, less than £10,000
  • travel costs
  • data preservation and data sharing
  • knowledge mobilisation and dissemination costs, such as conferences and seminars for a policy or practice audience or pursuit and development of new user contacts
  • estates and indirect costs
  • costs to support the use and development of open-source software for project delivery
  • costs for public involvement and engagement (PIE) activities

What we will not fund

We will not fund:

  • support for principally academic outputs (such as an academic paper, conference or a publication)
  • any kind of studentships including stipends
  • large items of equipment costing over £10,000
  • NHS research costs when they are associated with NHS Studies
  • animal costs

Supporting skills and talent

We encourage you to follow the principles of the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers and the Technician Commitment.

Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I)

UKRI is committed in ensuring that effective international collaboration in research and innovation takes place with integrity and within strong ethical frameworks. TR&I is a UKRI work programme designed to help protect all those working in our thriving and collaborative international sector by enabling partnerships to be as open as possible, and as secure as necessary. Our TR&I Principles set out UKRI’s expectations of organisations funded by UKRI in relation to due diligence for international collaboration.

As such, applicants for UKRI funding may be asked to demonstrate how their proposed projects will comply with our approach and expectation towards TR&I, identifying potential risks and the relevant controls you will put in place to help proportionately reduce these risks.

See further guidance and information about TR&I, including where applicants can find additional support.

How to apply

We are running this funding opportunity on the new UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Funding Service so please ensure that your organisation is registered. You cannot apply on the Joint Electronic Submissions (Je-S) system.

The project lead is responsible for completing the application process on the Funding Service, but we expect all team members and project partners to contribute to the application.

Only the lead research organisation can submit an application to UKRI.

If the lead research organisation is an NHS organisation check it is available in the Funding Service, you are encouraged to check this early as there may be additional steps for the organisation to be set up before you can apply.

To apply

You can only apply for this funding opportunity if we have invited you to do so. The start application link will be provided via email.

  1. Confirm you are the project lead.
  2. Sign in or create a Funding Service account. To create an account, select your organisation, verify your email address, and set a password. If your organisation is not listed, email support@funding-service.ukri.org
    Please allow at least 10 working days for your organisation to be added to the Funding Service. We strongly suggest that if you are asking UKRI to add your organisation to the Funding Service to enable you to apply to this funding opportunity, you also create an organisation Administration Account. This will be needed to allow the acceptance and management of any grant that might be offered to you.
  3. Answer questions directly in the text boxes. You can save your answers and come back to complete them or work offline and return to copy and paste your answers. If we need you to upload a document, follow the upload instructions in the Funding Service. All questions and assessment criteria are listed in the How to apply section on this Funding finder page.
  4. Allow enough time to check your application in ‘read-only’ view before sending to your research office.
  5. Send the completed application to your research office for checking. They will return it to you if it needs editing.
  6. Your research office will submit the completed and checked application to UKRI.

Where indicated, you can also demonstrate elements of your responses in visual form if relevant. You must:

  • use images sparingly and only to convey important information that cannot easily be put into words
  • insert each new image onto a new line
  • provide a descriptive legend for each image immediately underneath it (this counts towards your word limit, so must not be included in the image)
  • ensure files are smaller than 5MB and in JPEG, JPG, JPE, JFI, JIF, JFIF, PNG, GIF, BMP or WEBP format

Watch our research office webinars about the new Funding Service.

For more guidance on the Funding Service, see:

References

Applications should be self-contained, and hyperlinks should only be used to provide links directly to reference information. To ensure the information’s integrity is maintained, where possible, persistent identifiers such as digital object identifiers should be used. Assessors are not required to access links to carry out assessment or recommend a funding decision. Applicants should use their discretion when including references and prioritise those most pertinent to the application.

References should be included in the appropriate question section of the application and be easily identifiable by the assessors, for example (Smith, Research Paper, 2019).

You must not include links to web resources to extend your application.

Deadline

MRC must receive your application by 26 November 2024 at 4:00pm UK time.

You will not be able to apply after this time.

Make sure you are aware of and follow any internal institutional deadlines.

Following the submission of your application to the funding opportunity, your application cannot be changed, and applications will not be returned for amendment. If your application does not follow the guidance, it may be rejected.

Personal data

Processing personal data

MRC, as part of UKRI, will need to collect some personal information to manage your Funding Service account and the registration of your funding applications.

We will handle personal data in line with UK data protection legislation and manage it securely. For more information, including how to exercise your rights, read our privacy notice.

We will need to share the application and any personal information that it contains with DARE UK so that they can participate in the assessment process. For more information on how DARE UK uses personal information, visit DARE UK Privacy Notice.

Publication of outcomes

MRC, as part of UKRI, will publish the outcomes of this funding opportunity at the DARE UK website.

If your application is successful, we will publish some personal information on the UKRI Gateway to Research.

Summary

Word limit: 550

In plain English, provide a summary we can use to identify the most suitable experts to assess your application.

We usually make this summary publicly available on external-facing websites, therefore do not include any confidential or sensitive information. Make it suitable for a variety of readers, for example:

  • opinion-formers
  • policymakers
  • the public
  • the wider research community

Your summary should include:

  • the theme of your application and the challenge it addresses
  • the aims and objectives of your project
  • details of public involvement and engagement
  • the potential benefits to stakeholders such as the public, data controllers, custodians and research communities

Core team

List the key members of your team and assign them roles from the following:

  • project lead (PL)
  • project co-lead (UK) (PcL)
  • specialist
  • professional enabling staff
  • research and innovation associate
  • technician
  • visiting researcher
  • fellow
  • researcher co-lead (RcL)

Only list one individual as project lead. If you include more than one project lead your application will fail at the checking stage.

Public contributors should be added to your application under the ‘specialist’ role within the core team (if applicable).

Find out more about UKRI’s core team roles in funding applications.

Application questions

Vision

Word limit: 1,000

What are you hoping to achieve with your proposed work?

What the assessors are looking for in your response

Explain how your proposed work:

  • is of excellent quality and importance within or beyond the field(s) or area(s)
  • has the potential to advance current understanding, or generate new knowledge, thinking or discovery within or beyond the field or area
  • is timely given current trends, context, and needs
  • impacts world-leading research, society, the economy, or the environment

Within the Vision section we also expect you to:

  • clearly articulate how this work will contribute to the DARE UK vision and integrate with the Phase 2 roadmap
  • demonstrate how this work will meet a range of user need(s) and enable real-world impacts
  • clearly articulate how this work will benefit the public directly, indirectly or both
  • clearly articulate how this work will deliver against one of the three specific themes and the cross-cutting theme described in the funding opportunity scope
  • clearly articulate how this work will support research programmes across the wider sensitive data research ecosystem
  • clearly articulate how this work will support and work with the broader UK TRE ecosystem (including DEA-accredited TREs)

References may be included within this section.

You may demonstrate elements of your responses in visual form if relevant. Further details are provided in the Funding Service.

Approach

Word limit: 7,000

How are you going to deliver your proposed work?

Explain how you have designed your approach so that it:

  • is effective and appropriate to achieve your objectives
  • is feasible, and comprehensively identifies any risks to delivery and how they will be managed
  • uses a clearly written and transparent methodology (if applicable)
  • summarises the previous work and describes how this will be built upon and progressed (if applicable)
  • will maximise translation of outputs into outcomes and impacts
  • describes how your, and if applicable your team’s, research environment (in terms of the place and relevance to the project) will contribute to the success of the work

Within the Approach section we also expect you to:

  • provide a project plan including milestones and timelines, in the form of an embedded Gantt chart or similar. This project plan must include public involvement and engagement (PIE) plans, engagement with UK TREs (supporting testing and adoption), and engagement with real-world research projects
  • provide a comprehensive risk register including any mitigation measures to manage those risks
  • articulate how, building on previous work, you will transition your core component towards production-readiness for deployment in production environments and ready for validation in real-world sensitive data research settings (including DEA-accredited TREs)
  • explain how you will ensure your core component can be used across different types or domains of sensitive data
  • explain how you will appropriately embed public involvement and engagement (PIE) within your work
  • explain how you will work with relevant information governance authorities, organisations and any other groups
  • clearly articulate how you your work will align with and support the other work programmes of DARE UK Phase 2
  • provide a plan for how you will support and work with the sensitive data research communities to test and validate your work
  • explain how you will engage and support relevant stakeholders (including the TRE community, researchers and information governance authorities) to ensure your core component has a clear pathway to adoption by UK TREs
  • demonstrate access to the appropriate services, facilities, infrastructure, or equipment to deliver the project
  • explain how you will manage the outputs of the project, including any software assets and intellectual property
  • identify whether you will use public data within your project and, if so, explain how it will be used
  • acknowledge the commitment to work with DARE UK and the other successful applicants to co-define how to ensure the integration of core components as a technically interoperable set of capabilities

You are encouraged to use 500 words to provide information about reproducibility and how you will ensure reliability and robustness of your work, such as further details of statistical analyses, methodology and experimental design. If this information is not applicable, then you should not use this space to expand on other areas of your approach and your response to this section should be below the word limit.

References may be included within this section.

You may demonstrate elements of your responses in visual form if relevant. Further details are provided in the Funding Service.

Public involvement and engagement

Word limit: 1,000

Explain how public involvement and engagement (PIE) will support successful delivery of your proposed work?

What the assessors are looking for in your response

An explanation of how your proposed work will:

  • deliver or contribute to the delivery of public benefit
  • adopt a clear and robust PIE strategy guiding the delivery of your PIE work stream
  • ensure that PIE is embedded throughout project planning, decision-making, delivery, reporting and evaluation
  • ensure a diverse representation of members of the public in your project
  • effectively implement and communicate your PIE activities and outcomes
  • capture, evaluate and demonstrate the impact of PIE at all stages of delivery

Refer to the DARE UK PIE guidelines document (PDF, 694KB) as a guide.

Engagement with external bodies representing the public(s) is strongly encouraged.

Governance

Word limit: 650

Explain how you will establish a project governance process that will assist you to successfully deliver your proposed work?

What are the assessors looking for in your response

Explain how the proposed work will be managed, demonstrating that it:

  • will be effectively governed, including details about advisory structures
  • will be effectively and inclusively managed, demonstrated by a clear management plan suitable for a multi-institutional, collaborative initiative
  • has clear leadership team roles and responsibilities
  • will manage and encourage partnerships with non-HEI organisations across government, industry and civil society
  • has plans for monitoring your progress as well as self-evaluation throughout the lifetime of your project
  • is committed to dock into DARE UK governance structures where appropriate – this will be defined collaboratively between the DARE UK Delivery Team and project leads (see information pack for more details)

Collaboration with the DARE UK programme and wider ecosystem

Word limit: 650

How will you collaborate on key aspects of federation and interoperability?

Explain how you will collaborate on key aspects of federation and interoperability as part of DARE UK Phase 2 and the wider ecosystem, including but not limited to:

  • inter-TRE data exchange formats based on the RO-Crates standard
  • a common approach to inter-TRE user, data and project registration
  • a common technical architecture or framework for cross-domain inter-TRE federation in the UK
  • a common picture for intra-TRE capabilities required to support cross-domain inter-TRE federation in the UK, including emerging needs and gaps

Applicant and team capability to deliver

Word limit: 3,000

Why are you the right individual or team to successfully deliver the proposed work?

What the assessors are looking for in your response

Evidence of how you, and if relevant your team, have:

  • the relevant experience (appropriate to career stage) to deliver the proposed work
  • the right balance of skills and expertise to cover the proposed work
  • the appropriate leadership and management skills to deliver the work and your approach to develop others
  • contributed to developing a positive research environment and wider community

You may demonstrate elements of your responses in visual form if relevant. Further details are provided in the Funding Service.

The word count for this section is 3,000 words: 2,500 words to be used for R4RI modules (including references) and, if necessary, a further 500 words for Additions.

Use the Résumé for Research and Innovation (R4RI) format to showcase the range of relevant skills you and, if relevant, your team (project and project co-leads, researchers, technicians, specialists, partners and so on) have and how this will help deliver the proposed work. You can include individuals’ specific achievements but only choose past contributions that best evidence their ability to deliver this work.

Complete this section using the R4RI module headings listed. Use each heading once and include a response for the whole team, see the UKRI guidance on R4RI. You should consider how to balance your answer, and emphasise where appropriate the key skills each team member brings:

  • contributions to the generation of new ideas, tools, methodologies, or knowledge
  • the development of others and maintenance of effective working relationships
  • contributions to the wider research and innovation community
  • contributions to broader research or innovation users and audiences and towards wider societal benefit
Additions

Provide any further details relevant to your application. This section is optional and can be up to 500 words. You should not use it to describe additional skills, experiences, or outputs, but you can use it to describe any factors that provide context for the rest of your R4RI (for example, details of career breaks if you wish to disclose them).

Complete this as a narrative. Do not format it like a CV.

References may be included within this section.

UKRI has introduced new role types for funding opportunities being run on the new Funding Service.

For full details, see Eligibility as an individual.

Project partners

Add details about any project partners’ contributions. If there are no project partners, you can indicate this on the Funding Service.

A project partner is a collaborating third party organisation who will have an integral role in the proposed research. This may include direct (cash) or indirect (in-kind) contributions such as expertise, staff time or use of facilities.

Important note: If your application includes industry project partners, you will also need to complete the Industry Collaboration Framework (ICF) section. Find out more about ICF.

You must ensure that any third-party individual or organisation you include within the Funding Service as a project partner, also provides you with a supporting email or letter of support (see next section ‘Project partners: letters or emails of support’).

The individual named as the project partner contact, cannot be included in your application as a member of the core team, in any core team role.

The project partner organisation cannot be an applicant organisation, where any member of the core team is based. For example, you cannot include a different department based within the applicant organisation as a project partner.

If an individual or organisation outside the core team is responsible for recruitment of people as research participants or providing human tissue for this project, list them as a project partner.

Add the following project partner details:

  • the organisation name (searchable via a drop-down list or enter the organisation’s details manually, as applicable)
  • the project partner contact name and email address
  • the type of contribution (direct or in-direct) and its monetary value

If a detail is entered incorrectly and you have saved the entry, remove the specific project partner record and re-add it with the correct information.

If there are specific circumstances where project partners do require funding for minor costs such as travel and subsistence, these project partner costs should be claimed and justified within the resources and costs section of your application.

For audit purposes, UKRI requires formal collaboration agreements to be put in place if an award is made.

Project partners: letters or emails of support

Word limit: 10

Upload a single PDF containing the letters or emails of support from each partner you named in the ‘Project partners’ section. These should be uploaded in English or Welsh only.

What the assessors are looking for in your response

Enter the words ‘attachment supplied’ in the text box, or if you do not have any project partners enter ‘N/A’.

What supporting statements we are looking for

Important note: We are only looking for you to provide project partner letters or emails of support from the following:

  • a third-party individual
  • a third-party organisation

Third party means the individual and organisation must not be involved in the application core team. You must ensure that any project partners providing a supporting document, are also added to the ‘project partners’ section within the Funding Service.

Ensure you have prior agreement from project partners so that, if you are offered funding, they will support your project as indicated in the ‘Project partners’ section.

For audit purposes, UKRI requires formal collaboration agreements to be put in place if an award is made.

What supporting statements we are not looking for

We are not looking for you to provide any letters or emails of support from individuals or organisations included in your application core team (this includes other departments within the same organisation). Any individual or organisation included in your application with a core team role cannot also be a project partner.

Do not include any other statements or any other type of information we have not requested, including letter or emails of support from colleagues simply expressing supportive opinions. We only expect letters or emails of support from your third-party project partners uploaded to this section.

If you include any information not requested by MRC, your application will be rejected.

Supporting document guidance for third party project partners

Each project partner supporting letter or email you provide, should:

  • be no more than two A4 pages
  • confirm the partner’s commitment to the project
  • clearly explain the value, relevance, and possible benefits of the work to them
  • describe any additional value that they bring to the project
  • include the name of the project partner organisation and contact information (this should match the partner contact and organisation name details you must add to the ‘Project partners’ section)

Project partners letters and emails of support are not required to be on headed paper or include handwritten signatures (electronic signatures are acceptable from the nominated partner contact).

Project partner responsibility for the recruitment of people

If the project partner is responsible for the recruitment of people as research participants or providing human tissue their letter or email of support should include:

  • agreement that the project partner will recruit the participants or provide tissue
  • confirmation that what is being supplied is suitable for the proposed work
  • confirmation that the quantity of tissue being supplied is suitable, but not excessive for achieving meaningful results (if applicable)
Multiple project partners

If you have multiple project partners, you should:

  • ensure each separate letter or email of support, does not exceed two pages of A4
  • consolidate all the supporting documents provided by each project partner into a single PDF file before uploading
  • ensure the PDF does not exceed the maximum file size of 8MB

For the file name, use the unique Funding Service number the system gives you when you create an application, followed by the words ‘Project partner’.

Industry Collaboration Framework (ICF)

Word limit: 1,500

Does your application include industry project partners?

What the assessors are looking for in your response

If industry collaboration does not apply to any of your project partners, or you don’t have any project partners, simply add ‘N/A’ into the text box.

If your research project involves collaboration between an academic organisation and an industry or company, you are likely to need to follow the industry collaboration framework and answer this question, check using the ICF decision tree.

The assessors are looking for information relating to the nature, goals and conditions of the collaboration and any restrictions or rights to the project results that could be claimed by the project partner.

By ‘industry or company’ we mean an enterprise that puts goods or services on a market and whose commercial activities are greater than 20% of their overall annual capacity.

Find out more about ICF, including:

  • collaboration agreements
  • definitions of basic or applied research
  • internationally based companies
  • subsidy control
  • Intellectual property (IP) arrangements
  • fully flexible and gated contributions
  • the ICF assessment criteria

In addition to the project partner information completed in the previous section, confirm your answers to the ICF questions in the text box, repeat this process for each ICF project partner:

  1. Name the industry or company project partner considered under ICF.
  2. Indicate whether your application is either basic research or applied research.
  3. Explain why, in the absence of the requested UKRI funding, the collaboration and the planned research could not be undertaken.
  4. State whether your application is under the category of either fully flexible contribution or gated contribution (based on the IP sharing arrangements with the ICF partner).
  5. Outline the pre-existing IP (‘background IP’) that each project partner, including the academic partner, will bring to the collaborative research project and the terms under which project partners may access these assets.
  6. Outline the IP that is expected to be developed during the collaborative research project (‘foreground IP’) and briefly outline how it will be managed, including:
    • which project partners will own this IP
    • what rights project partners will have to use academically-generated foreground IP during and after the research project, for internal research and development or for commercial purposes
    • any rights of the academic partner to commercialise the foreground IP, including foreground IP generated by project partners
  7. Outline any restrictions to dissemination of the project results, including the rights of the project partner to:
    • review, approve or delay publications (including the time period associated with such rights)
    • request or require the removal of any information
  8. Declare any conflicts of interest held by the applicants in relation to the project partners and describe how they will be managed.
  9. If applicable, justify collaborating with an overseas industry or company under ICF.
    Failure to provide the information requested for industry partners under ICF could result in your application being rejected.

You are recommended to discuss the goals and conditions of any collaboration with an industry or company project partner with your university technology transfer or contracts office before applying.

Trusted Research and Innovation (TR&I)

Word limit: 100

Does the proposed work involve international collaboration in a sensitive research or technology area?

What the assessors are looking for in your response

Demonstrate how your proposed international collaboration relates to TR&I, including:

  • list the countries your international project co-leads, project partners and visiting researchers, or other collaborators are based in
  • if international collaboration is involved, explain whether this project is relevant to one or more of the 17 areas of the UK National Security and Investment (NSI) Act
  • if one or more of the 17 areas of the UK National Security and Investment (NSI) Act are involved list the areas

If your proposed work does not involve international collaboration, you will be able to indicate this in the Funding Service.

We may ask you to provide additional information about how your proposed project will comply with our approach and expectation towards TR&I, identifying potential risks and the relevant controls you will put in place to help manage these risks

Facilities

Word limit: 250

Does your proposed research require the support and use of a facility?

What the assessors are looking for in your response

If you will need to use a facility, follow your proposed facility’s normal access request procedures. Ensure you have prior agreement so that if you are offered funding, they will support the use of their facility on your project.

For each requested facility you will need to provide the:

  • name of facility, copied and pasted from the facility information list (DOCX, 35KB)
  • proposed usage or costs, or costs per unit where indicated on the facility information list
  • confirmation you have their agreement where required

Facilities should only be named if they are on the facility information list above. If you will not need to use a facility, you will be able to indicate this in the Funding Service.

Data management and sharing

Word limit: 1,000

How will you manage and share data collected or acquired through the proposed research?

What the assessors are looking for in your response

Provide a data management plan which should clearly detail how you will comply with MRC’s published data management and sharing policies, which includes detailed guidance notes.

Provide your response in the text box following the headings in the MRC data management plan template. You are not required to upload the document to your application.

Ethics and responsible research and innovation (RRI)

Word limit: 500

What are the ethical or RRI implications and issues relating to the proposed work? If you do not think that the proposed work raises any ethical or RRI issues, explain why.

What the assessors are looking for in your response

Demonstrate that you have identified and evaluated:

  • the relevant ethical or responsible research and innovation considerations
  • how you will manage these considerations

Consider the MRC guidance on ethics and approvals.

The following can be included to support your response. How will you:

  • safeguard sensitive data assets hosted within the services you work with
  • work with relevant information governance authorities to ensure transparency, accountability and effective risk management during the project

You may demonstrate elements of your responses in visual form if relevant. Further details are provided in the Funding Service.

Research involving human participation

Word limit: 700

Will the project involve the use of human subjects or their personal information?

What the assessors are looking for in your response

If you are proposing research that requires the involvement of human subjects, provide the name of any required approving body and whether approval is already in place.

Justify the number and the diversity of the participants involved, as well as any procedures.

Provide details of any areas of substantial or moderate severity of impact.

If this does not apply to your proposed work, you will be able to indicate this in the Funding Service.

Resources and cost justification

Word limit: 2,000

What will you need to deliver your proposed work and how much will it cost?

What the assessors are looking for in your response

Justify the application’s more costly resources, in particular:

  • project staff
  • significant travel for field work or collaboration (but not regular travel between collaborating organisations or to conferences)
  • any consumables beyond typical requirements, or that are required in exceptional quantities
  • all facilities and infrastructure costs
  • all resources that have been costed as ‘Exceptions’
  • support for public involvement and engagement work
  • support for international co-leads, demonstrating this is within the 30% costs cap for co-leads from developed countries, India and China. There is no cap on costs requested for international applicants from DAC list countries
  • any work to be outsourced, including the reason for outsourcing, scope, provider and cost
  • any costs supporting researcher-generated open-source software necessary for project delivery

Assessors are not looking for detailed costs or a line-by-line breakdown of all project resources. Overall, they want you to demonstrate how the resources you anticipate needing for your proposed work:

  • are comprehensive, appropriate, and justified
  • represent the optimal use of resources to achieve the intended outcomes
  • maximise potential outcomes and impacts

How we will assess your application

Assessment process

We will assess your application using the following process.

Expert panel review

There will be no external written peer review for this funding opportunity. All applications will be assessed by an independent expert panel. The expert panel will consider the applications based on whether they are in alignment with the DARE UK vision, feasible to be delivered within the time scale, are robust enough to cater for a wide array of use cases and demonstrate a high probability of being adopted by the sensitive data research community.

The expert panel will comprise of experts in:

  • Trusted Research Environment (TREs) and the sensitive data research space
  • the technical areas relevant to each of the thematic areas
  • public involvement and engagement (PIE)

The expert panel will provide written feedback to all applicants.

Expert panel interview

Following expert panel review, all applicants will be invited to an interview. Applicants will be expected to:

  • present an overview of their project
  • address any points in the written feedback provided by the expert panel
  • participate in a short Q&A session led by the expert panel

The expert panel will make a funding recommendation at the conclusion of the interview session.

We expect interviews to be held in January 2025.

Timescale

We aim to complete the assessment process within two months of receiving your application.

Feedback

We will give feedback with the outcome of your application.

Principles of assessment

We support the San Francisco declaration on research assessment and recognise the relationship between research assessment and research integrity.

Find out about the UKRI principles of assessment and decision making.

We reserve the right to modify the assessment process as needed.

Assessment areas

The assessment areas we will use are:

  • vision of the project
  • approach to the project (including data management) public involvement and engagement
  • governance
  • collaboration with the DARE UK programme and wider ecosystem
  • capability of the applicant or applicants and the project team to deliver the project
  • ethical and responsible research and innovation considerations of the project
  • resources requested to do the project

Find details of assessment questions and criteria under the ‘Application questions’ heading in the ‘How to apply’ section.

Contact details

Get help with your application

If you have a question and the answers aren’t provided on this page

Important note: The Helpdesk is committed to helping users of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Funding Service as effectively and as quickly as possible. In order to manage cases at peak volume times, the Helpdesk will triage and prioritise those queries with an imminent opportunity deadline or a technical issue. Enquiries raised where information is available on the Funding Finder opportunity page and should be understood early in the application process (for example, regarding eligibility or content/remit of an opportunity) will not constitute a priority case and will be addressed as soon as possible.

Contact details

For help and advice on costings and writing your proposal please contact your research office in the first instance, allowing sufficient time for your organisation’s submission process.

For questions related to this specific funding opportunity please contact informatics.informatics@mrc.ukri.org

Any queries regarding the system or the submission of applications through the Funding Service should be directed to the helpdesk.

Email: support@funding-service.ukri.org
Phone: 01793 547490

Our phone lines are open:

  • Monday to Thursday 8:30am to 5:00pm
  • Friday 8:30am to 4:30pm

To help us process queries quicker, we request that users highlight the council and opportunity name in the subject title of their email query, include the application reference number, and refrain from contacting more than one mailbox at a time.

See further information on submitting an application.

Sensitive information

If you or a core team member need to tell us something you wish to remain confidential, email informatics.informatics@mrc.ukri.org

Include in the subject line: [the funding opportunity title; sensitive information; your Funding Service application number].

Typical examples of confidential information include:

  • individual is unavailable until a certain date (for example due to parental leave)
  • declaration of interest
  • additional information about eligibility to apply that would not be appropriately shared in the ‘Applicant and team capability’ section
  • conflict of interest for UKRI to consider in reviewer or panel participant selection
  • the application is an invited resubmission

For information about how UKRI handles personal data, read UKRI’s privacy notice.

Additional info

Background

An information pack will be provided to applicants, as well as additional information session(s) to be scheduled, to provide context and clarity on the overall programme of work for DARE UK Phase 2 prior to the final submission deadline to ensure all applicants understand the overall context of Phase 2 and how this funding opportunity fits within the wider programme of work.

Additional disability and accessibility adjustments

UKRI can offer disability and accessibility support for UKRI applicants and grant holders during the application and assessment process if required.

Webinar for potential applicants

We will hold a webinar that will provide more information about the funding opportunity and a chance to ask questions.

The date will be confirmed in due course and a link to the webinar will be sent out to applicants invited to this funding opportunity.

Research disruption due to COVID-19

We recognise that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused major interruptions and disruptions across our communities. We are committed to ensuring that individual applicants and their wider team, including partners and networks, are not penalised for any disruption to their career, such as:

  • breaks and delays
  • disruptive working patterns and conditions
  • the loss of ongoing work
  • role changes that may have been caused by the pandemic

Reviewers and panel members will be advised to consider the unequal impacts that COVID-19 related disruption might have had on the capability to deliver and career development of those individuals included in the application. They will be asked to consider the capability of the applicant and their wider team to deliver the research they are proposing.

Where disruptions have occurred, you can highlight this within your application if you wish, but there is no requirement to detail the specific circumstances that caused the disruption.

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