Provision of consultancy services to assist Principal Investigators/researcher from across Physical Sciences and Engineering, Social Sciences, Life Science, and Humanities domain areas to prepare

Tender description

The European Research Council (ERC) is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe. The ERC offers 4 main grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants. The ERC's mission is to encourage the highest quality research in Europe through competitive funding and to support investigator-driven frontier research across all fields, based on scientific excellence. Maynooth University is currently the Host Institution to seven (7) ERC funded awards (>€10M) and as part of the MU Strategic Plan aims to increase this number of awards hosted at Maynooth University. Consultancy services are required to work with Principal investigators/researchers from across Physical Sciences and Engineering, Social Sciences, Life Science, and Humanities domains to develop competitive research proposals for submission to the European Research Council. Tasks include review of draft proposals, feedback on aspects for development, interview training, and research grant-writing training, webinars and masterclasses. Suppliers will be required to work directly with Principal Investigators to: • Assist the researchers to produce the research proposals • Provide timely, iterative feedback on proposals over the course of their development and up to submission deadline • Feedback may be provided via virtual feedback meetings (conference calls) and in written feedback. • Provide interview training for Principal Investigators/researchers who proceed to the ERC interview stage. This support would comprise assistance and advice on the presentation format and content, slide presentation and delivery techniques. • Provide grant writing webinars and masterclasses specifically on ERC funding calls. These should be provide as a virtual and in house (in-person) options.