We have a new vision, and with it, a renewed focus. Work to develop this has been underway for some time, but when COVID-19 struck, it would have been easy to pause, to rethink, to retreat, but we didn't, and we won't. Mental health, global heating, and infectious diseases, these are the three most urgent health challenges we face. And discovery research, going to the edge of today's knowledge, and then beyond, will bring totally new insights, which can and will bring unforeseen benefits to everyone. To do all of this, we also need to change how we fund science, and we need science to change with us. We want the broadest range of people to contribute to and benefit from science's ability to change the world. And this is just the start. I hope you will join us as we embark on our most ambitious journey yet. Welcome everyone to this webinar where we're going to discuss the details of WELCOME's new discovery research funding schemes. I'm really pleased that you've joined us today. My name is Diego Baptista, and I work here at WELCOME as a diversity and inclusion advisor on our research culture program. My pronouns are he or him. I'm a brown man with salt and pepper hair and dark brown eyes.  I'm really excited to introduce you to our speakers. I'll call each of our speakers in one by one, and I will ask them to share their video, say your name and your role at WELCOME, your pronouns, a brief visual description of yourself. So, Michael, can I ask you to turn your camera on and introduce yourself? Hello, everybody. My name is Michael Dunn. I am Director of Discovery Research at WELCOME. I'm a tall Irish man, and I've got short, dark hair and blue eyes, and I have a picture of a Madonna behind me, which is from the National Gallery. Thank you. Thanks, Michael. Alison, can I ask you to turn on your video and introduce yourself? Hello, everyone. My name is Alison Fox. I'm the Director of Research Funding, at WELCOME.  I have shoulder-length blonde hair. I'm wearing glasses, and I'm sitting in a very plain white-walled room. Thanks, Alison. Ann, can I have you come in and introduce yourself? Hi, Delia. Thanks very much. Hi, I'm Ann Taylor. I'm Associate Director of Funding Operations and Governance. I'm a white woman with car-length curly brown hair, increasingly going grey. I'm wearing glasses, and I've got a blue and pink floor top with a blue cardigan on. Thanks, Ann. And last but not least, Jim, can I ask you to turn your video on and introduce yourself? Hi, everyone. I'm Jim Smith. I'm the Interim Director of Research Programs. I'll be in this job for two more weeks, and then my place will be taken by Gerald Moore. I'm an old-ish white man. I've never described myself as an old white man before, but that's what I am. With a grey beard and grey hair, he, him, and I'm wearing a grey pullover. I'm very grey. And behind me, I can see bookshelves and pictures on the walls and coats hanging up. So thank you very much for joining us. I'm very much looking forward to this. Perfect. Thanks, Jim. So before we actually get started, I'm going to go through some housekeeping. So firstly, you can access closed captions with the settings function and blue jeans. This will be in the lower right-hand corner of your screen. There's also a link that is shared with you for live captions for the event throughout the rest of it. We will have slides today, as you can see. If you hover over your screen, there should be a little slider where you can change the size of the slide itself versus the size of the video. And then at the very end, we'll go into a Q&A where over 200 of you sent in questions before the session, which we're super grateful for. I'll be managing how our questions get answered. We've tried to group them into themes, and then we'll have everybody come back on to answer those questions. So why don't we get started? And Michael, can I ask you to come back on where you will describe the vision of our new schemes? Thank you very much. And it's not at all daunting to be talking to 3,000 people on this webinar. But I just wanted to give you a little bit of a sense of kind of how we got here with our new discovery schemes and to give a little bit of a flavor of what it is that we're looking for from these schemes and from you. So I think it's fair to say that over the years, one of Welcome's major founding principles has been that science is essential to improving health. And I think we'd all agree over the events of last year that's really a statement that's never been more true. Our funding for Welcome has established, I had essentially increased really from the 1980s. And I guess since then, a lot of things have changed. The world has changed, science has changed, and Welcome has changed. And I think what we want to do now is to ask how best and Welcome's ensure that its support for science has the greatest impact on human health. And that's why we embarked on a major strategic review. So Jim, who role of just met in the introductions led on the development of a new strategic direction for Welcome. And this began with asking how Welcome funded science might best achieve Welcome's mission. And the aim was to try to create a single highly focused strategy for our whole organisation. And that strategy was to have science at its very heart. The review was launched back in 2018 and as part of it, Jim and his team really consulted very widely and broadly, both within the Welcome family, but also a lot of people that we haven't funded and people from all sorts of different health-related walks of life. We spoke to people from very many different career stages and from different countries. And we tried to ask ourselves the question of really where should Welcome be in 10 to 15 years time and what are the major scientific and health challenges that we should be seeking to overcome. So the outputs of that review really resulted in two quite different but complementary approaches to supporting science. The first is that we will support a broad foundation of discovery research. That's research in search of the unanticipated benefits which come from curiosity-driven research. And alongside discovery research, we will also support three challenge-led programmes which have specific long-term outcomes that will take a proactive, coordinated and directed approach to tackle some of the most important threats to human health. So that's mental health, infectious disease and climate and health. I should at this point say that alongside discovery research and health challenges is our commitment to improving research culture and this is actually going to be embedded and important in everything that we do. Then this speaks to issues of diversity and inclusion and our desire that science as a career really is open to everyone. So next slide please. So if we can turn now to discovery research, all of the conversations that the review team at Welcome had led us to really make a clear commitment and understanding that advances in health can come from unexpected sources and indeed a large number of health interventions have in the past come from basic curiosity-driven fundamental research which is aimed at solely understanding our life works. Now as other funders invest less into discovery research I think it becomes even more important than ever for Welcome to contribute to knowledge and understanding and thereby not only solve our own health challenges but actually challenges that are much broader and relates to all areas of health and wellbeing. So we want to provide the best scientists in both clinical and non-clinical research and in humanities and social science with the freedom to be able to ask really exciting questions. So we're funding discovery research and we want that discovery research to achieve significant shifts in understanding that could lead to improved human health. Doing new insights and potentially new tools that open up new avenues for researchers to explore. In many ways discovery research could be seen as an evolution of previous Welcome funding and I think it is to some extent but we have given a lot of thought to the schemes that we will need to deliver a Welcome's vision and ambition and we really want to be much bolder and more ambitious in our offering. So we really want the research that we support to have the potential to push the boundaries of our existing knowledge or push the boundaries of the techniques or tools and help to venture into the unknown if you like. And we want our research to be really visionary and creative in that respect. And as part of that we want to give individuals and teams the freedom to pursue innovative and bold research and we want to do that by moving towards increasing the level and length of support for researchers in our portfolio and try to shift the balance of our funding to researchers who are a little bit earlier on in their careers. We are being explicitly broad and outlook so we want to be open to all disciplines that could benefit our strategy. So that means I think walking the walk when it comes to talking about interdisciplinarity and being open to other disciplines. And I also really want to highlight the importance that tools and technologies will play in our new strategy. It's an explicit icon that we're looking for and we recognise that these things can fundamentally go fails of research overnight and I didn't think in the past we've done enough in terms of supporting that kind of research. So one of the big changes I guess in welcome strategy has been that the creation of the three health challenges and those health challenges span all the way from basic discovery through to policy practice and interventions. Whereas discovery research is explicitly broad so we can't hope to have translational impact across the whole of biomedicine. I think we are hoping to have it within the health challenges but for discovery research we are really trying to focus on the fundamental research questions which are going to drive our understanding of biology and of health and wellbeing. So I think this has implications for translational research in terms of discovery. In the future we will not be supporting some of the more translational focused research where the outcome is explicitly an intervention or some drug discovery. But of course we will be able and want to continue support research which uses human participants such as in experimental modes. So discovery is broad. The health challenges are very deliberately designed to go all the way from basic understanding through to translation and health impact. So I think we return to that now to some of the specifics of the schemes and I'm going to hand over to Alison Fox to take you through that. Thank you Michael. The full details of the schemes were released a couple of weeks ago. So I'm not going to run through everything there and we can cover lots of the questions that have arisen in the Q&A at the end of this webinar. So I'm just going to give a bit of an overview of the three schemes. As Michael says, in thinking about the schemes and how to approach discovery research, we drew upon everything that we heard during our science review in consulting with the research community. And we put that together with what WELCOME also wants from its discovery research. And that's things like a broader discipline set as the discoveries that could impact human health can be so in-dipeters. They can come from different types of disciplines. So we wanted to make sure that we could accommodate that sort of research as well. And we really want to make sure that we can accommodate interdisciplinarity and team-based research. A big thing that came out from the science review was the issue of flexibility, duration, getting off of the treadmill of constantly writing grant applications. And as Michael says, a little bit more of an emphasis towards that mid-career stage. So what we've aimed for here is to greatly simplify the set of schemes that we have. Those of you that have been familiar with WELCOME in the past will know that we've had innumerable different funding schemes, covering different disciplines, different geographies, peer stages. So we really wanted to simplify those down so that it can cover a broader discipline set, if you will. The basic eligibility for the discovery research schemes remains the same. That's the UK, the Republic of Ireland and low and middle-income countries. But it's really important to note that those based in the team can come from anywhere in the world, as is currently the case with our collaborative awards. Let's go on to the next slide, please. So very briefly, then, these are the three discovery research open-mode funding schemes. We have the early career award, which as you might guess is for early career researchers. And these are for the researchers who are really ready to establish their research identity, to begin to build their research capabilities and by the end to position themselves so that they are ready to lead an independent programme of research. Early career award holders will have their salary paid for on the grant. They can request research expenses for up to around £400,000. And these awards will be for up to five years. The career development awards are for those mid-career researchers. And this is a broad set, which we recognise this. But these are for those researchers who have established their independence and are really ready to drive innovative programmes of research and have the potential to become our international research leaders. Again, you can have your salary on these grants, what we've called the fellowships in the previous world. But we recognise that for some disciplines, people may reach that independence slightly earlier within their career stage. And they may have already obtained a permanent position in a university. So you can apply for one of these grants if you are within the first three years of your first permanent position. We haven't set a defined limit in terms of sums on these grants. But we just encourage people to request the resources that are required for their research programme. Be bold, be ambitious, but also be realistic. Those resources, as ever, will need to be justified in the grant application. And these grants can be for up to eight years. So that's longer than we've had previously. That's not to say that they have to be eight years. And it will be dependent on the research programme that you envisage and also the discipline that you are within. And then finally, there's the discovery award. And this is for researchers who are already established in their career and in their institutions. And we want these awards to give researchers the freedom to pursue bold and creative ideas which have the potential to deliver significant shifts in understanding and to impact our human health. Again, we haven't set a resource limit on these grants. But we encourage you to request what is needed for this research programme. Again, they can be up to eight years. They don't have to be eight years. That will be dependent on the research and the discipline. But we do envisage these grants, being or the research being funded through these grants being bold and with the potential to have a really significant impact. Discovery awards may be for one person. They may be for two people. They may be for a team of researchers. It's what's needed to really execute that ambitious programme of research. As I said earlier, the eligibility, the geographical eligibility hasn't changed. So it's the UK low middle income countries and the Republic of Ireland. We really do encourage researchers who have taken a career break for whatever reason that may be who may have worked in a different sector and would like to come back to basic research. For example, do come and apply for these schemes. Whether it's the early career or the career development award, we'd be a matter of judgment for you, essentially for when you left your research career previously. And as currently any of these grants may be taken part time. Next slide, please. Just a little bit about the application process. And I know that many of you will be very keen to know the details of this and we'll be releasing more information in the coming weeks. What we envisage is three rounds of applications a year for all of the schemes. The schemes will open to applications at the end of August, beginning of September. They may be slightly staggered with the early career at a different time point to the mid to the career development awards and the discovery awards. The application deadlines will be at the end of October, beginning of November, and the first decisions will be at the end of April or May next year, 2022. The assessment process we've looked at in detail. We haven't changed the basic process, the workflow that much, but we've looked at every element very, very carefully. We are going to continue with the process of short listing all applications by subject area expert panels. Those applications that are shortlisted, we will then obtain expert written review as we do now. For those shortlisted applications, we'll be inviting those into interview where the final recommendation will be made. Final decisions will be made by discovering the search by Michael and his team, drawing upon all the information and the recommendations that have been provided by our expert reviewers. The interviews that we foresee being in person as long as the Covid restrictions allow, and I think we are all hopeful that that can happen. For all of this process, we've looked really, really carefully to make sure that they are equitable, that they are accessible to all types of researchers, and to remove any risk of bias from the process. The assessment criteria will be common across all of the schemes, and that we'll be looking at the research proposal, we'll be looking at the research outputs of the applicant or applicants, and we'll be looking at the research environment, both the research environment that the applicants are in and their influence and impact on their local research environment. I think that's all I have to say at the moment, and I think we can probably move on to questions, Diego. Perfect. Thanks so much, Allison, and thanks, Michael. That's a really helpful overview of the new schemes. So, as Allison mentioned, we will move on to questions. As I mentioned in the beginning, we received, or we asked you all to input questions before this webinar, which was really helpful, and thanks for everybody who did that. We received more than 200 responses before the session, and we've tried our best to group them into themes. So, can I ask all of our speakers to share their video again? Perfect. Everybody's here. So, why don't we get started on the next slide? The first question is, how do these new schemes compare to your previous schemes? Is there a like for like? And Michael, I'm going to send this question to you first. Okay, so great question. I guess the first thing I wanted to sort of say is that we're really very proud of the success of the schemes that we've run in the past, and actually the people that we have supported on those schemes, I mean, some of them all the way from PhD through to very senior positions. So, people currently funded and welcome grants shouldn't be kind of concerned about their status within welcome, I guess is important to say. They should just kind of continue to do excellent work, and they're just as important to us as the people we will support with these new grants. But in terms of mapping the old world onto these new schemes, I mean, I think there are obvious similarities between the old schemes and funds, but I think has been mentioned both by Alson and myself earlier, it's a much more simplified approach. There's a longer duration of funding possible, which will enable researchers to become more creative, and we're really encouraging people to ask very, very challenging questions within the research. I think it's also fair to say that we are really trying to encourage more support at earlier stages of people's careers. I think it's been clear to me over the years that people are having to succeed at higher and higher levels at each stage in the review process before they're competitive, and I think that's really very unhelpful and can lead to kind of quite a bit of conservatism. So, I think we really are trying to refocus at that earlier stage so people don't feel they've got to be university professor stage before they're ready to get a career development award. So, there are similarities, but I think we really want these to be looked at as kind of a fresh opportunity for us to provide that flexibility, that freedom, and to bring down the seniority that people are finding themselves in when they're at that mid-career stage. Thanks very much, Michael. That was very thoughtful and thorough. Can we go on to the next slide, please? So, the next question is, why have you chosen no more than three years post-doc experience for the early career award eligibility? Is there any flexibility around this? And Allison, I'll go to you for this question. Thank you. Always a difficult issue about setting limits and boundaries on any funding scheme. It's important to know that three years is just a guide. If we don't give a guide, we know that we're going to get lots of questions, especially when we had one scheme for covering such a broad set of potential disciplines. So, it's really a guide, and yes, there is flexibility, and we're not going to say if you're three years and two months, then you absolutely can't come in. But we do want people to recognise that this is a scheme for those early career researchers who are ready to begin to build their own independence, ready to begin to build their own research identity, a standard post-doc. And so, that's why we've wanted to give a little bit of guidance here. Different people are going to be at different stages of readiness in their career, but for building towards their own lab or their own research group, if you will. So, it's not going to be a hard and fast rule, but we can't have infinite flexibility as well, actually. So, if you have completed your formal training for whatever that looks like in your discipline, it might be a PhD, it might be a period of research training that doesn't require a PhD. And you've then done more research training and you've done another formal period of research and then another. It's quite likely that this isn't the suitable scheme for you and that you should be thinking about the career development awards. So, this is really for those earliest career researchers who have done well and who are ready to start building their own research group. Thanks, Alison. I really like that. It's kind of practical guidance with appropriate flexibility. Can we go on to the next slide, please? So, this one will be for you again, Alison. For career development awards, is the three-year limit for researchers in a salary post fixed? If I applied to welcome, can I request my salary cover on my grant if I have a permanent position? I think this is probably a little bit easier to answer. And the three-year limit is more fixed. We will probably have less flexibility around this. As I said, when introducing the schemes, we do know that in certain disciplines, the career trajectory is a little bit different, actually, where earlier in their career, people may be in a permanent position. And this can be more typical in the social sciences, for example, than in the life sciences. So, that's why we wanted to make sure that those types of people could apply. They would not normally be eligible, if you will, for a standard fellowship where you get the salary. But that, again, can't continue forever. So, it's some guidance about who these awards are aimed at. If you have been lucky enough to get a position, first of all, well done. But that doesn't mean that you can step away from that position and then have your salary on one of these grants. We would expect the institution to honour the contract that they've given you. So, you may apply for a career development award, but the salary will still be coming from your host institution and we would be paying all of the research costs. Perfect. Thanks, Alison. I think we'll fall into a similar theme again if we can move on to the next slide. And you mentioned this in the last one. But so, if you fall between the early career award and the career development award, which award should I apply for? I mean, it depends what we mean by fall between. We don't have strict time limits. So, it's going to be a judgment call for you about where you think you are in your career, actually. If you're a long time past your training and your first period of research, it's more likely that you're going to be ready for the career development award. So, that's probably what you should be looking at. The early career is a little bit difficult to know how more to spell that out, actually. But that is what that's for. Michael, do you have anything to add on that? Not really. The thing is, everybody's situation is going to be different.  There will be far more information on the website as time goes on. And there will be instances where I think you'll need to talk to somebody in the office to get clarification. Great. Thanks, both. Can we move on to the next slide, please? So, this one will be for you, Michael. And the question is, why are some current welcome grant holders being allowed to apply for a career development award outside of the eligibility guidance? Yeah, so, this is a great question as well. And I guess the best way of thinking about this is, we are kind of at a period where we're going to be transitioning from our old schemes through to the future. And we thought really very hard about the responsibilities and commitments that we had made to the people that we had previously invested in, for example, the Henry Dale Fellows. You know, I think it's fair to say that the Dale Fellows would have been reasonably expecting to be able to apply for either an extension, which is kind of part of the deal, when they made their original application to welcome, or potentially to apply for a salaried senior research fellowship at the end of their grant. And so we thought it would be particularly unfair to kind of change the goalposts for those people. And, you know, that would potentially damage into those individuals, abruptly take away the opportunity to apply for a grant with continued salaried support. So, as I say, it's a transitional arrangement which will work its way through the system. But, you know, the ultimate goal is to have, you know, a pristine standard eight-year career development award, where the next stage is a salaried post at a university or institution where you would be able to apply for a discovery award. But, of course, I think one of the important things, maybe to say alongside this, is that, in terms of the decision-making processes that we come up with within Welcome, we need to make sure that those processes lie and take into account the different lengths of time that people will have under their belts when they're applying for these grants. And I think that's not something that we currently do, but I think it's particularly important to mention here. Because, as Alison has said, a lot of these schemes, they're intentionally broad in terms of the jumping on point. And so, actually, us being able to make those judgments in terms of, I guess, productivity based on the length of time that people have had support, we need to make sure that we do that well. Thanks, Michael. And I know lots of people at Welcome are working quite hard on this at the moment, which is really exciting. And we move on to the next slide. So, this one will be for you, Alison. If I submit multiple applications to the old and new schemes, is that allowed? And then will you consider my success rate from previous applications? So, if you've applied to one of our old schemes and you were unsuccessful, you're absolutely allowed to apply for one of the new schemes. And no, we will not look at your success rate if you will for our previous schemes. So, these are new, the new schemes. And we want them to be regarded as new schemes by us and by the research community. So, just look at the eligibility for the new schemes, look at the descriptors for the new schemes, consider whether you are suitable, whether you think, yep, that's going to suit me, that speaks to me, and then apply. And we will not be looking at any data to see whether you've applied for one of our previous schemes before. You can't submit an application to an old one and a new one at the same time. So, I think all of our deadlines are such that that won't be possible. But no, we won't be looking at what you've done previously. Brilliant, that is super clear. Can we move on to the next slide? This one is also for you, Alison. So, can I apply if I already hold a fellowship elsewhere? No. So, and that's because we're going to give you a lot of money. For this, and you're going to be proposing bold and ambitious research programs. And we would expect those programs to be taking up most of your time. We're not going to say you can't apply it, hold anything else at the same time. So, you can be co-applicant on a discovery award, for example, in due course. But for the early career and the career development awards, we would expect those to really be basically taking up the majority of your research time. Perfect, thank you. Can we move on to the next slide? Again, for you, Alison, when can I speak to someone about my application? Quite soon, as we get closer to opening the schemes, which are at the end of August. We're not ready just yet. So, when, where are we, April? I would say probably towards June, that's when we'll be able to really be much more open to speaking with people. But it depends what you want to know. We can tell you about the processes. We can tell you about eligibility. We can guide as to whether you might be suitable for one scheme or another. We can certainly tell you everything about the rules and what you can ask for and things like that. But we won't be speaking with people about the content of their applications, actually, which we want to be very equitable about these types of information that all researchers have access to. So, I think some query is already coming through to our information desk once we, as we released the schemes a couple of weeks ago. And we'll be beefing up the level of support that we provide in the coming weeks. So, I'd say by during May and certainly by June, there'll be much more people available to speak. Perfect. So, watch this space on our website for more information. Can we go to the next slide, please? This one will be for you, Michael. So, do applications through the schemes need to be in any of the health challenge areas? So, absolutely not. Going back to the strategy, there's distinction between discovery and the health challenges. Discovery is intentionally broad. So, I would be extremely surprised if the research that we fund through discovery isn't going to be important in helping to develop and shape the challenge areas, but that is not the primary purpose of discovery. And so, I think it's fair to say that, you know, what we don't want are people kind of artificially shaping and changing their grant applications so that they kind of make it sound like they're fitting the challenge areas. That will not be a factor in deciding on whether or not a piece of research is going to be funded or not. All we want is your best ideas. And the ideas, those ideas have the potential to change our understanding of life health and well-being. Perfect. Thanks, Michael. Can we go to the next slide, please? Perfect. So, another one for you, Michael. Can you clarify what support is available for clinical trials? Well, I guess the first thing to say is that, you know, I think I maybe mentioned in the introduction that, you know, the most clinical translational part of the portfolio for welcome will be through the health challenges because they are going all the way from basic discovery through to policy, practice and intervention. And discovery research. We will be focusing on early stage discovery and not pure translational research. So, I think the clinical there will be, so what's not in scope for us is research which is in there to create or test an intervention and that has a substantial clinical trial component to it. But what we are interested in hearing about is research which potentially uses human participants such as in an experimental medicine. And that that research has to be conducted in line with kind of welcome policies and guidance for clinical trials. But we will not be looking for clinical trials with an end point which is to create an intervention in discovery. Perfect. Thanks so much and I think that ties in nicely to this next question. If we can go to the next slide. Will you fund translational research including population health research? I feel like you touched on this, but is there anything else you'd like to add? Well, I mean, I know that there's a lot of population health research questions which are not, you know, purely about creating health interventions. And so I would fully expect us to be, we are open to everything, we're open to all good ideas, we're open to all disciplines and absolutely we are open to population health research. Absolutely. Where I think we kind of have to be, I guess there's going to be a judgment call, we'll be on the level of pure translation within those proposals. I think a little bit of translation as a kind of an offshoot of what is primarily a discovery grant is fine. But I think if the main purpose of that grant is to carry out some major piece of translational research or an intervention, that is not going to be in the remit. I think you may be better off having a conversation with people that are involved in the challenge areas. Perfect. And we'll be quite clear about that when the challenge areas get sort of developed and we announced that. Can we go on to the next slide please? For this one will be for you, Alison. Are you discouraging applications for smaller, shorter grants? No. So not, we certainly don't expect every grant to be up to the limit of five years or eight years depending on the scheme. And really people should apply for what's needed for their program of research. Having said that, for those of you that are familiar with the project grants, we don't expect the discovery awards to be project grants. In fact, we don't want the discovery awards to be project grants in the same way that we didn't want our current investigator awards to be project grants. We do expect them to be bolder than that. We do expect them to have the potential to make significant shifts in research. We're not really looking for grants that may be used in incremental steps. So we're not going to put limits on this, but we're not expecting everything to be eight years. We know that it will vary with discipline for sure as well. So we're going to be very flexible with that and we will understand that those discipline changes. So I think that we know that it can be difficult to give a detailed articulation of a program of work for eight years, for example. And actually we know that it can be quite difficult to review that if there isn't a lot of detail. So there are challenges that we and all other funders face with doing this. And so what we're thinking about, and we haven't got the detail finalised, is that maybe requesting a detailed program of work for say the first five out of an eight year program, but then more of the overall vision for the final three years. And that's something that we will be putting on our scheme wages and in our assessment criteria. What we don't want, because of if we get longer larger grants, we don't want our application forms to become big and unwieldy and bulky and huge. I've seen a few questions about that. So I think we were quite bold some years ago in making our application forms shorter. And we are going to keep that the case. So we're not going to have 10,000 word research proposals or anything like that. We're going to keep them much shorter and probably shorter than many other proposals. And I have heard about questions about grants from other funders. We're not going to prevent people from doing anything. We know that researchers have to build their careers. They have to build their search base. So if you do hold a career development award, for example, yes, by all means apply for a project grant from another funder or indeed be a co-applicant on a discovery award. From welcome. But for any of these grants, of course, you'll just have to be clear and be able to justify and explain how you'll be able to do the research on all of it. So if you're building up a whole portfolio of grants and then you want a big one from us as well, then yes, we'll be asking how you're hoping to do this. These are significant grants and so we do expect them to have significant time devoted to them. That's really helpful. Thanks, Alison. Can we move on to the next slide? How many grants are you anticipating that you'll award?  Michael, I'll go to you for this question. So thank you. So this is kind of like the million dollar question and it really will depend very much on the number and quality of the grant application that come in through the door and the size of the requests on those grants. So we haven't set a particular number of grants that we're expecting to support but overall our spending for what was maybe previously science and humanities and social science will continue broadly in line with what we have spent in the over the last few years. But clearly, we haven't put a time limit on discovery awards, how the length of time that people can apply for those grants and we want people to be ambitious with their ideas. It's fair to say that not all eight year grants will be credible and justified. So I think it's important for people to really think about the resources that they need to carry out the research that they want to do so make sure that their cloth is cut to suit the task. Clearly, if everyone asks for the maximum amount of money for the maximum amount of time, that fundamentally changes the overall number of grants that they could fund. So that's a long way around about saying we don't know. We will know when we kind of have run through the system a few times. But one thing is for sure that we will not be ring fencing budget through different disciplines or different disciplinary areas. And as we currently do, we will be focusing our decisions based on the quality of the applications that come in through the door. Thanks very much, Michael. Can we move on to the next slide? Another one for you. What PhD funding opportunities are you offering? So we are offering flexibility within the career development award and discovery awards for people to enroll one postgraduate research assistant at a time to study for a PhD. So I think that's quite good that we're being explicit about that. And that kind of complements our continued funding for the on-going welcome PhD programs where the basic ones, which will run for another six or seven years, and there's a clinical allied healthcare professional call, which is currently out. And that's kind of our current funding for PhDs. I think maybe alongside this as well, there might be a question about in different disciplines that people may well not have a PhD at that early career stage. And we are allowing people to ask for PhD support for their fees for early career grant holders. But it's not a student award, but it's being able to request those fees. Perfect. Thanks very much. The next question will be for you, Alison, if we can go to the next slide. So why is teaching buyout only being offered to humanities and social science researchers? The short answer to this is because that's what we've always done. We've looked at this and we've looked at all of the funding-related policies that we currently have to see whether they are still fit for what we want to do and will work with the new schemes or whether there is any change. So the humanities and social sciences have always had the opportunity to apply for just a small amount of teaching buyout. It's not all of their teaching by any means. And this simply reflects the different shape of the research endeavour in the humanities and social sciences and the different types of contracts that they typically have in UK universities where they're expected to do much, much more teaching. And the nature of their research is different. It's often, it's much more frequently, where the PI is really, really engaged in doing the research solely and it's very accepted practice that they need to step away from their administration and teaching for a short period of time to enable them to do that research. So we will be continuing with that, but we will also want to be clear that it's our expectation that all of our researchers do engage with teaching as we know that they do now in line with their contracts. We don't want to build into our research culture that you do one or the other in any way. And that's something that we do not want to promote. Thanks very much, Alison. It's very clear. If we move to the next slide, this one is for you, Michael. How will you support research enrichment, for example, public engagement for your grant holders? So thank you. Good question. So I guess the first thing to say is that Welcome is establishing a brand new kind of in-house team headed by someone called Daniel Comer. And that team is to focus solely on the research environment. That's the issues to do with research culture, open research. And I guess kind of broader engagement with publics. So research enrichment and public engagement is going to be a key part of the work of this new team. And they will be looking to develop a plan to support this in the long term. My understanding is that grant holders up until 2023 will still be able to buy for research enrichment based on their existing old style welcome grants. But in the future, there will be something else that will come into place, details which will be developed over the coming time. Perfect. Thanks, Michael. So we have about five minutes left and a few more questions. I think we'll be able to get through all of them, and then I'll kind of close out the session. Can we move to the next slide, please? Though another one for you, Michael, are you still planning to fund infrastructure and resources beyond these schemes? So one of the things that Jim's review highlighted was the importance of resources as enablers of research, really important enablers of research. But the review itself concluded that running an open-mode grant scheme may not be the best way of welcome, making an impact in terms of these kinds of resources. So we're going to be looking quite hard over the coming months at how we might be able to direct funding for resources in the future. So it's a little bit more deliberate and a little bit more thought through. So while we may not have an open-mode support, those resources which we maybe had done in the past through the biomedical resources grant scheme, we foresee some ability for welcome to support those kinds of activities. But I think there is a benefit to us doing it in a more deliberate way in that that this whole kind of thorny problem of sustainability, long-term viability, I think we can kind of deal with that upfront and in a very real way when we do this kind of strategic approach to supporting these kinds of resources. That's perfect. Thanks, Michael. And we'll move on to one more for you, Michael, which is why do you think it's necessary for researchers to spend time away from their home institution? Well, I think it's a good one to clarify because I think, you know, it's, what we really think is important is for researchers to be able to have the freedom to establish their own identity away from the environments in which they've trained. So we're not expecting necessarily for researchers to move universities, if that may not be possible. It may not be desirable for those people. But we do want them to be able to spread their wings in some way and to have that freedom to kind of establish that kind of sense of independence. And so, you know, I think what we're trying to do is to make sure that people know that if they are a postdoc in somebody's lab, that if they're sitting in that same lab in the same kind of way, it's going to become very difficult for them to establish their own identity. So we're just asking for people to kind of think about how best they can do that. And I think the environment is kind of one part of that. It doesn't have to be moving city, but I think it does have to be moving out of that direct, I guess, direct supervision of your previous supervisor. Excellent. Thanks, Michael. And we'll go to the last question, which is close to my heart. And I'll ask you, Alison, how will these schemes impact or positively influence research culture? I should throw this back at you, Diego, a bit close to your heart. So I'm going to heart back to something Michael said a little while ago, introducing our new Department of Research Environment, which will be led by Dono Conner. And that's to recognise that research culture, impacting research culture cannot be met through these schemes alone. They can certainly contribute it, but it really is a bigger piece of work, much of which will require us to welcome to work with institutions and make our wishes, expectations, sometimes known there. But there are a few things through the schemes that we will hope will influence research culture. Firstly, we will continue with our expectation that institutions provide mentorship and sponsorship for the early career and the career development awards. In assessing applications, we will be looking at research environment, research culture, as I mentioned at the beginning when going through the slides. And that's both the environment that the researcher is in, but also their contribution to their local environment and what they've done. And that may be their management, their leadership appropriate to career stage, of course. We'll be asking about that in that application and in the interview process. We will be requiring institutions to allow a certain amount of days per year for all researchers on air grants to engage in continual professional development. And that will be an absolute requirement. I think we've said 10 days, but don't quote me on that. Having gone public with that, I think we will be quoted. We will pay for the costs of CPD for continual professional development, where those courses, where that training is not available within an institution, the researcher can request it on the grant and we will pay for that. We will be expecting institutions to either commit to a position or at least to commit to having a formal review during the course of a career development award, so that that award holder knows that there is either a post or there is a path to a post during, by the end of their grant or shortly thereafter. And finally, just to mention now, I've seen some questions about senior postdocs and can they be co-applicants. And that's something that we also want to do, is to make sure that we recognise all people who are having a significant contribution, not a minor contribution. But if there is a senior postdoc who is helping to write a grant, who has helped to shape the programme of research, who is going to have significant input in running that programme of research, then yes, they should be a co-applicant and they will be recognised as such on one of our grants. So that's just a flavour of the sort of things that we'll be doing for research culture. That is excellent and a variety of flavours that I think are really attractive. So I'm really sorry if we didn't get to your particular question and if it wasn't answered. I know people were putting questions in the live Q&A and I'm really sorry that we couldn't monitor those during it. If I could go to the next slide and then direct people to our schemes page if you have more questions that you'd like to submit. And that's how you'll be able to sort of contact the team. I'll just take a really brief moment to again thank all of our speakers. So thanks Alison and Michael for answering questions so thoughtfully and for Jim and Anne to sort of be back up in case we had technical difficulties. Thanks Russell and Catherine for signing the entire session and thank you very much to everybody who's sort of been working behind the scenes that has made this run really, really smoothly. I hope you're as excited about these new schemes as I am and I hope that you'll stay tuned to our website and our social accounts for their developments in discovery research and welcome strategy. So thanks everybody, enjoy the rest of your day.


and go over here, my Fawcicon shirt, I changed my shirt earlier. Fawcicon, if you don't know, here in Florida a couple of years ago, this guy, Brian, really cool guy, started Fawcicon here in Orlando, free and open source software conference, so it's not a Linux conference, he did two of them and the last one was in 2015 and there hasn't been one since. He always seemed very stressed out, it's a lot of work for him, so I understand why he hasn't done any, I've tried to contact him and he hasn't really replied to any of my things, but if Brian, if you're out there, I'd love another conference, man. Okay, so let's see. I wanna talk about, hmm, that's not the best lighting, let's, there we go. I wanna talk about a couple of weeks ago and I bring up this guy often, a lot of you probably watch his videos, you may have different feelings about him, Brian Lunduk, Brian Lunduk, I love watching his videos. I agree with a lot he says, I disagree with some of the stuff he says, especially when it comes to JavaScript stuff, he just hates JavaScript and I think his reasons are unfound, but he recently did a video about HTTPS and why he doesn't use it on a site and it's his site, he can do whatever he wants and he brings up some valid points, but his arguments are poor and so this was his main two things, why he doesn't like HTTPS for, he's like, okay, obviously I'm banking sites and transaction stuff, but other sites, you don't need it and I disagree. First of all, let's talk about why you need HTTPS, even if you're not submitting forms or transferring personal information, is that if you've done any type of network sniffing, you can know you can inject stuff, you know, the old joke of flipping all the images on a website or changing out the images, but really, if I am on a network, anybody else on that network, if the communication is not using HTTPS, it's not encrypted, they can not only see what I'm doing, but they can manipulate what I'm doing, they can redirect me to other pages, they can change text on this page, they can change download links, if I had to download something from a site, it could be infected with something malicious and it's just a bad idea to not have things encrypted when you can, not the end of the world. If I'm here at home, I kind of without middle of nowhere, there's no other house to surround me, so there's not a lot of, you know, Wi-Fi traffic, I would kind of notice if there was somebody else not here, somebody else not here, somebody here who's not supposed to be here, I have my network encrypted, but you know, if you're out on an open network and you're not using a VPN or some sort of tunnel or something like that, and people can sniff your traffic and they can change things. So let's say I went to Brian Lunduk's website and I don't really know if he has anything to download he has software he's written, but I think he probably has it up on GitHub or something, but let's say I wanted to download something from a site, even if something as simple as a PDF, if I'm using an insecure PDF viewer and there's some sort of malicious software or malicious code inside a PDF, I'm not too concerned about that since I don't use the Adobe viewer, but it directly could happen with any software that has a security issue in it. But let's say he puts the code for one of his projects online, and someone downloads that code and compiles it, it'd be very easy for someone to inject different code there, or even if I'm downloading, especially if I'm downloading binaries. So HTTPS is a good idea, even if you're not transmitting personal stuff, because I could be going to Brian Lunduk's website and I could start reading stuff and someone on my network could inject text on there and also I think Brian Lunduk's a Nazi, although it seems like some people already think he is, which is, he's not. So, that's reasons for HTTPS, even when you're not transmitting bank information or submitting forms, anything being transmitted to your computer can be injected.  Hopefully I think a lot of people viewing this like me have Flash disabled majority of the time. I have it installed in Chrome, but I have it disabled except for sites that I enable it. But maybe, I mean, I doubt he has any Flash on his website. I can tell you right now he doesn't. But let's say I went to a site and I enabled Flash and they'll send someone injects another Flash and there's a Flash vulnerability, which there is all the time, blah, blah, blah, blah. Encrypt when you can. His arguments against putting HTTPS, encrypting the traffic to his site were two things. The first thing was he was talking about older machines becoming obsolete because they don't have options for the HTTPS. I am all about backwards compatibility when possible. And yes, you can leave HTTPS off and these old, I can open up Windows 95 and open up Windows Explorer and go to a website with HTTP or with HTML and download it. But even then a lot of stuff from those old machines aren't gonna work and his point is again, you should be backwards compatible. But yeah, but you also need to move forward at times. Earlier in this stream, I talked about how my site uses JavaScript, but I also have just plain HTML that does server-side stuff that you can use in the shell. My site works for both in that case. But what about HTTPS? My website uses HTTPS. Since let's Encrypt is free, why wouldn't I? Well, according to him, you shouldn't because of older software, older operating systems, we won't be able to access the site then, which is not true. Not true because when you set up HTTPS, you have an option to auto forward to HTTPS. And you can disable that if you want. My site, as far as when I set up my encryption keys, I don't automatically forward. But then I do have some Apache settings that certain parts of my site automatically forward because there's some parts of my site that I made a while ago that I would need to update the code on the page because not all of it's encrypted and you'll get alerts, HTTPS will go. If you're trying to receive something that's not encrypted, it goes, whoa, which it should, this is not encrypted. But you have the option. I can have HTTPS on my site, but make it optional. So just having HTTPS, just encrypting your site does not mean that everyone has to encrypt if their software doesn't. That's an option of the website's designer. So just because you have HTTPS on your site doesn't mean that you're locking other people out. Now I could make it a requirement, okay? But again, he's talking about older hardware. And yeah, if you go way, way back, the older hardware, it's, you're not gonna be able to put much new software on there's not software being developed for it. But a lot of older hardware, if you go back to the nineties, I can grab a nineties computer, run a current version of Linux on it and have HTTPS. So he's not talking about just old machines, he's talking about old software. And old software, I love working with old machines. I love seeing what type of modern stuff that I can, and things that I can accomplish on old hardware. But if you're choosing to use old software, you're choosing to use old software usually for fun. It's not productive stuff. Obviously there might be some examples out there, someone who's stuck with an old machine and they need to use this old software, which is really a bad habit, which means it's probably proprietary software because if it was open source, you'd be able to update it for the newer features. So I just don't like his first argument because one, like I said, I can have HTTPS but make it optional. So just having HTTPS on my site doesn't mean that I'm locking you out. If I mandated it, I don't think there's necessarily a way around it. For say, if the software doesn't work with security certificates, at least not the older stuff, you can tell newer software to ignore it, but I don't know if the older software would know what to do. But again, you're talking about a very small amount of the population. And if they really, really care that much, they should upgrade their software, either take the code and add in the functionality for HTTPS or just say, I can't go to these sites, right? So that's the first argument.  His second argument is that HTTPS, because the security certificates expire after a time, make them DRM because if I designed a site add a security certificate and then abandon that site after a certain amount of time, those certificates are gonna expire and my site is gonna become unusable, making it DRM, which is not true at all. Because even if I let my certificates expire, that doesn't prevent people from going to my site. They're gonna get an alert saying, hey, the certificate has expired, warning, don't go to this page unless you trust it, but you can always ignore that. Even with WGIT, you can say ignore SSL certificates in Chrome and Firefox, you can say continue anyway. So it's not DRM having HTTPS on your site because just because certificates expires does not mean that you're preventing it from doing it because it can expire and that person just have to say, I don't care, let's go anyway, because that certificate's still there, they can still use that certificate, it's just expired and you're gonna get warnings on your machine unless you tell your computer, hey, ignore these, ignore these warnings and then you won't even see them. Like I said, with WGIT, you can say, I forget the exact minutes like dash dash no SSL certificate or something like that or SSL certificate no or false or something like that, you can tell it to ignore it. So it's not DRM because there isn't a limit on how long you can use that computer, that website because it expires, it's just a limit to where the certificate's considered valid and you can always ignore it. As far, if I'm wrong, let me know, write down in the comments and stuff like that, but as far as I know, at least with modern software, you can say ignore certificates even if they're expired. So no, I don't see it as DRM in the least. So those are his two arguments. I see the point of backwards compatibility, but at the same time, we can't live in the past for everything, there are certain things that we need to move forward and securing a website even if there's nothing, private on there needs to be done because of injection, redirecting, all that sort of stuff, again on my local network, my network's encrypted, I'm pretty sure it's secure, I'm not worried here at home, but if I was out and about, which happens, and even if I'm doing it here at home, people in between your ISP and other people can interject stuff if they wanted to, obviously hopefully they wouldn't do that, but I see the point of his two arguments, but they're both invalid, especially the second one, that it's DRM, that's just ridiculous because it does not prevent you from going to site. It's the best of my knowledge. I even let the certificate on my website expire the other day, just for a little bit, and I was still able to get to my site just to test it out. So if you went to my site the other day and the certificate was expired, that's why, just was like that for a little bit. So yeah, again, with let's encrypt, there's no reason not to encrypt unless you're with a web host that doesn't let you use those certificates, which before I switched over, I currently use Vulture, I'm not paroling them, I've been very happy with them. It cost me $2.50 a month to have a website and an extra dollar to do bi-weekly, not bi-weekly, twice a week backups that in case something goes wrong, I can go back and then I can manually make backups as much as I want, images as much as I want. You don't let you pull those images takes elsewhere, although there's ways around that, you can boot a live CD and DD or image over and stuff like that, but with them, I just, you know, you set up a virtual machine, I log in, it's my Debian machine that I just set up and download the let's encrypt and run them and I'm good to go. Before that, I was with HostGator, which wasn't a virtual machine that I was using, it was just their web machine and to the best of me, I couldn't get let's encrypt to work and when I read, they didn't allow those certificates, you had bi-certificates from them and if you are with a service like that, you might wanna look into switching to another service, plus I was paying much more for the HostGator website. Anyway, encrypt, use let's encrypt and if a website like Brian Lungduke's site doesn't support SS8, HTTPS and you're not on a secure net, what you consider a secure network, suggest using VPN or some sort of tunnel. Again, it's not the end of the world and really if you're not downloading stuff from that website, the worst, well, I'll say the worst that can happen because again, malicious plugins could be, you know, installing a site like Flash, but if you're smart, you have that stuff disabled, but still, it's like, you never know if you're looking at what you're supposed to be looking at if it's not encrypted, even then, you know, you can only trust it so far. So let's see, let me move here.


Now, I'm gonna deal with all the haters and the naysayers and whatnot from Twitter where that was going against my bring brashabh perryman home agenda. I'll deal with y'all later, but first the Baltimore Ravens, they have cut their very first corner. Because you know, like corner right now, it's like loaded and not loaded all at the same time, but the Ravens made their first roster cut at the corner back position. They released, well, corner safety Deandre Houston Carson, and he was somebody that he played for the Bears before, but he was somebody that was known as sort of like a Swiss army knife. He was compared to the Anthony Levines of the world. So the Ravens, they cut them though. I guess they couldn't find a place for him. And that's that. It's official now. So he is no longer, at least for now, a Baltimore Raven based off of what he can do. Because he's apparently a really good special team. He's somebody that can play some corner, somebody that can play some safety and somebody that Tavon Young, former Baltimore Raven, somebody that Tavon Young gave the approval for. So it almost makes you wonder if the Ravens told him, like, look, hey, Deandre, do you just just stick around for a little bit. Just stay in the area. Don't don't even get a flight out. Stay in the area. Just pay. We'll pay for your hotel or whatever.  We'll bring you right back because remember something to keep in mind is that any with any player that signed after the roster cut downs after the rosters are made official. But you know, like an NFL roster is never fully official because it's so much that changes. But after the rosters are made official after Tuesday's 4 p.m. deadline, then anybody that signs a deal after then their contract is not fully guaranteed. They are on a week by week basis. So say, for instance, they sign a one year, $10 million contract. And I know that that's probably a terrible example. Anyway, but they get paid week by week. So say, for instance, a one year, $10 million contract, they wouldn't sign anybody for that. But if they did, and they only played three weeks and then the Ravens cut them, the remaining 14 weeks, that wouldn't be guaranteed. They wouldn't get that they would only get exactly what they played. So that's going to be happening a lot, not just with the Ravens, but with the NFL in general, different players and moving because of that. Because teams, they're not going to be wanting to guarantee some of these deals for some of these players. And they are going to be willing to take that risk and be like, you know what? We'll release this person because we know that we can take that risk. Hey, if they go to another team, cool. But if we can bring them back even cooler, but we can bring them back and they can be cheaper and the salary won't be guaranteed. But just something to keep in mind. Team keep it clean. I appreciate y'all. Make sure you subscribe. Turn notifications on because it's going to be going crazy. It's going to be going crazy because it's going to be really busy. I love y'all. Appreciate y'all. And for now, we out. I'm sure I'll see y'all very soon.


Last week, voters in Portland, Maine, legalized the use of recreational marijuana for residents 21 and older. The measure, Question 1, passed with about 70% of the vote, making Portland the first East Coast city to legalize recreational pot. A proposal makes it legal for adults 21 and older to possess up to 2.5 ounces of pot in the city. Buying, selling, or using marijuana in public still remains illegal. Voters express their opinions of the new ordinance. If it's done with respect and with a public community with, you know, people not smoking on buses and stuff like that, then I can think that is tolerable. They want now it just feels more comfortable, you know, they can have what they have and they don't feel like they're going to get harassed for it, you know. The passage could spark further efforts to legalize recreational marijuana in the state as it was in Washington and Colorado in November 2012. It's cool like symbolically and like on the ballot next year, hopefully we'll have like statewide legalization if things go well here in Portland. The only thing is it really hasn't changed anything because the city of Portland doesn't really care like if you smoke weed anywhere real. The new law will go into effect December 6th, however, the new ordinance will not override state and federal laws reporting from City Hall in Portland, Maine. I'm Megan Riggs, BUTV 10 News.


In British Columbia we have today as you know 99% of the public sector unions are now in agreement with government on long-term contracts and we've worked as worked very hard over the last few years to build new relationships with unionized workers across the province in our own government but also outside. And part of that has been including unionized workers in our LNG planning work that we've been doing supporting their call to include more apprentices in the when government is contracting and a number of other areas where we've really we've found common cause together. The iron workers support heavily support industry as far as LNG, sightseed dams, mining, stuff like that. That's our bread and butter. That's the things that put our young people to work and create a strong tax base. You can't support working people if you don't support work. If you don't support creating opportunities to work for working people. And that's why we support LNG. That's why we support sightseed. That's why we support the big investments in infrastructure that we're going to be making that we are making all across the province. That's work for men and women who want to go to work every day, earn a decent paycheck and come home and support their kids.


So one of the things that happens is when you're going through to verify your requirements, sometimes you have to build these big complex systems. And what you see on the next chart is probably one of the biggest, most complex. So what you see there is a command and service module from Apollo inside a gigantic chamber. And that chamber is one where it's down at Johnson Space Center. And what you can do there is you can suck out most of the air, create a pretty good vacuum, and you could raise and lower the temperature to the temperatures you would see in space using cryogenic things like cryogenic nitrogen, liquid nitrogen, to cool the inside of the chamber. You can heat the chamber up with very bright lights and heaters. And so you could replicate a space environment to see, again, I have all these requirements that say my vehicle must work in a space environment. I need to be able to put this thing in a chamber to see if it will work as close as I can simulate in a space environment on Earth. So what you see here is that when you do that, you might have to actually write some additional requirements that are going to help you do the verification process.