Fifteen facts about EPSRC

Thanks very much to Alex Hulkes for his visit and presentation about EPSRC in general and their ICT programmes in particular. Here are fifteen things that I learned.

1. EPSRC has about £2.5bn worth of live projects at any time.
2. “We have to do applied research …” because it is part of EPSRC's Royal Charter.
3. Terminology: EPSRC has two kinds of theme: “capabilities” correspond to specific research areas, while “challenges” are cross-cutting themes like energy or global uncertainty.
4. Terminology (2): for EPSRC “interdisciplinary” means belonging to more than one of their research areas.
5. 75% of PGR funding is DTP plus CASE, and so not subject to particular shaping or direction.
6. Pathways to impact: either say how you will achieve impact, or say that it doesn’t make sense for your research to have impact (at this point). 
7. It’s good if you can say how your research project fits in with what EPSRC are currently funding, as long as it’s not a straight duplication of work that’s already funded.
8. Developing leaders (fellowships): while it’s important to have a good research project, that’s a necessary rather than a sufficient condition: you need to be able to convince that you are a research leader.
9. These schemes are less popular than earlier fellowships schemes, perhaps because of the difficulty of getting evidence of leadership potential down on paper.
10. In ICT, EPSRC wants to keep developing and encouraging new research areas. It also wants greater collaboration with other areas
11. It’s also keen to get ambitious proposals: of the funding for responsive – rather than directed – research, some 50% of the cash is in longer/larger grants.
12. Proposals will get at least 3 reviews for panel.
13. There's no correlation between the number of reviewers and the success/failure of the proposal.
14. The PI response is important: the factual response has an effect when (and only when!) you can provide evidence that shows that an objection doesn't hold.
15. Success rates (at least for ICT) are constant across areas set to grow/stay constant/ shrink. On the other hand the “grow” area has received more applications.