Awards
Please note that the webpages relating to awards are those constructed in 2006 for the second call. They have not been updated.
SPARC has had two calls for proposals. No further calls are planned. The two calls attracted 186 valid proposals of which 34 were successful in achieving support, although there were others of a very high quality which could not be supported because of limited funds. The details of the awards scheme and guidance given for the second call are below. The projects supported by SPARC are here.
Objectives
The aims of this call are:
- To stimulate high quality, novel engineering and biological research addressing the needs of older people
- To increase the capacity of the UK science and technology base for ageing research.
Focus
Successful SPARC proposals will combine scientific excellence with a clear potential to build the capacity of the UK to conduct ageing research in the future. Support is available for any ageing-related project within the general remits of EPSRC & BBSRC including (but not restricted to):
- consumer product design
- care home design and management
- design of transport systems
- design of the workplace
- new tools for ageing research
- translational research into immune ageing
- chemical analysis of ageing tissue
- intervention in ageing processes.
Whilst there is no intention to favour particular areas of ageing research as being more important than others as a result of the proposals received for Call 1 the SPARC Advisory Committee and other interested stakeholders have identified a number of areas which were under-represented in Call 1.
Firstly, they would encourage applications which exploit the opportunity provided by SPARC due to its joint funding by EPSRC and BBSRC in areas which bridge the engineering, biological and medical disciplines. There were relatively few proposals submitted to Call 1.
Secondly, specific areas which have been identified as worthy of greater interest are: Nutrition, Immunology, Neurodegeneration (for example, as it relates to dementia patients), Sensory and Cognitive ageing, Computational and Mathematical Modelling applied to Ageing, Assistive Technology, Frailty in the Home (rather than in institutional settings), Meeting Aspirations and Supporting Lifestyles, Age Discrimination in Housing and Neighbourhood Design, The Older Person as Home Designer, and Healthy Indoor Environments. But these are just a few of those areas which offer both scientific and topical challenges.
For areas which are well-established within EQUAL there is much scope for new thinking in many fields including consumer product design, care home design and management, urban design and the design of transport systems. Further, some topics have yet to be addressed, such as the design of the workplace and establishing business cases for the adaptation of the home and of the workplace for older people.
Established areas of SAGE and ERA offer plenty of opportunities for innovative thinking in the integrative science of ageing including the development of new tools for ageing research, translational research into immune ageing and the development of chemical analysis and intervention in ageing processes.
Proposals which fall between the core remits of the BBSRC and EPSRC are particularly welcome, for example bringing together the perspectives of ergonomics and bio-mechanics; an awareness of the biology and the mechanics of falls, an understanding of biomaterials science and bio-compatible implants; and linking work on neurobiology and stroke recovery. Many opportunities arise when taking a user perspective of old age, for example healthy eating brings together issues of kitchen design, food packaging and diet; managing incontinence can bring together the biology of muscle function and its enhancement and the development of new materials and assistive technologies. Yet other opportunities arise when considering the tools required by biological gerontologists which can have their genesis in chemistry or physics as readily as in pure biology.
Approach
Proposals may take many forms including:
- empirical, theoretical, feasibility and speculative studies
- the elaboration of recently completed doctoral or post-doctoral research
- small scale speculative research or research tool development (i.e. monoclonal antibodies, analytical method development or vector systems)
- translational research
- pre-commercial development, testing or proto-typing of products or systems
- preliminary analyses of secondary data sets relevant to design, engineering, technology, bioinformatics, biological and biotechnology issues.
Resources
SPARC is funded by EPSRC and BBSRC to facilitate the development of ageing-related research. For Call 2 awards will typically be for £25,000 (for Directly Incurred Costs) but exceptionally may be up to £40,000 and with a maximum of 12 months duration. Proposals requesting lower levels of financial support, and for projects for which some other funding is available will be welcomed.
In line with the Research Councils introduction of Full Economic Costing (FEC) each award will be supplemented by an amount to meet some overhead costs, but not all of these. We hope to meet most allocated costs but will not be able to meet indirect costs. For more details please consult the section on resources.
Additional Support
It is possible that, contingent on a successful application to SPARC, some applicants will have access to additional financial support for their work from their own institutions or from other bodies, for example, small charities. Proposals with this type of support are welcome and are encouraged as a means of achieving leverage for support from both SPARC and other sources.
Comments on Call 1 Proposals
In its review of Call 1 the SPARC Advisory Committee made a number of observations which may be useful to those considering applying to Call 2.
Areas of study
The Panel was very pleased to see that the proposals had covered a broad range of design, engineering and biology but surprised that there had been rather few proposals which brought together disciplines from engineering and biology, engineering and medicine, and biology and medicine. A number of areas which it considered worthy of consideration can be found earlier on this page.
General Issues
Although the general standard of the proposals was high, the Awards Panel noted some frequently occurring issues.
- Because the length of SPARC proposals was much shorter than for research council proposals some applicants had difficulty providing sufficient detail about their work, although this was not always the case.
- Quite often an explanation of the methodology was sacrificed to a description of the context. Because of the use of expert referees and panel members a briefer contextualisation would have been adequate.
- A fairly frequent issue was applicant’s lack of awareness of recent research findings. This was particularly the case with a sizable minority of engineering and design proposals which seemed unaware of work supported by EPSRC through EQUAL and other special programmes. Information about EQUAL projects can be found at www.fp.reading.ac.uk/equal, also a vary good source of information is www.cpa.org.uk.
- Whilst a good number of proposals combined disciplines from engineering and social science, and quite often these would involve a considerable degree of interaction with older people, there was disappointment that some had been written in insensitive, ageist language. For example, the term “the elderly” is generally regarded as unacceptable in those communities which work directly with older people, if not by most members of society. However it is recognised that when used in the specific context of biological research this may be an appropriately precise scientific term.
- For some proposals the presentation of the projects potential for Capacity Building was poor. In some cases this is because the necessary institutional support or the links to external agencies, say, to sustain a project in the community, had not been secured. More discussion of the importance of the Capacity Building aspect of SPARC can be found in other parts of the Awards section of this web site.
Submission
Proposals should be made on the application form which is available as a download from this site.
You are strongly advised to read the full text of the sections on this web site concerned with awards and assessment (in particular the SPARC eligibility criteria, triage criteria and guidance for referees) before submitting an application.
Further Information:
- Eligibility
- Special Features
- Resources
- Review Process
- FAQs about applications for SPARC Awards
- Awards: Downloads
SPARC Projects: Overview | Life in the Home | Streets, Buses and Cars | Care Systems | The Older Worker | Product and Interface Design | Cognition and Communication | Vision | Exercise and Diet | Chemical Biology of Ageing | Oxidative Stress and Ageing Mechanisms | SPARC Project downloads | SPARC Awards Background | Eligibility | Special Features | Resources | Review Process | FAQs about applications for SPARC Awards | Awards: Downloads | Funded Programmes |
