ELIGIBILITY:

All proposals must be led by an Early Career Researcher from a Health Collaborative member institution (See Appendix 1 for the definition of ECR by each institution) and can be bilateral (2 ECRs between two Health Collaborative member partners) or multilateral (three ECRs between three or more member partners). Proposals must also include participation of masters, doctoral or post-doctoral trainees. Eligible applicants may only lead one application (Further application requirements for applicants at each institution can be found in Appendix 2). 

If you do not have a co-applicant from a Health Collaborative member institution, your application will be shared publicly in a repository for you to identify potential co-applicant(s) to apply for the Fund. 

External collaborators (including researchers from other universities internationally, or those working in non-academic contexts such as community organizations, government, NGOs) cannot lead an application but can be involved in the proposed activities, where the benefit of their involvement to the collaboration is justified in the proposal. 

Proposals may include targeted research support such as joint workshops, researcher exchanges, and the formation of research exchange groups between Health Collaborative member institutions.

Joint projects will commence from June 1, 2025 for a maximum of 18 months.

BENEFIT:

Bilateral projects are eligible to receive up to $22,000 USD – with each institution awarding up to $11,000 USD to investigators at their home institution.  (Multilateral proposals will be scaled up to $11,000 USD per institution). 

The funding provided is intended to support expenses including but not limited to costs of travel (ECRs, Post-Doctoral Fellows, research associates, graduate student researchers) between the institutions, and costs associated with research, workshops and meetings