Help with new grantsUK Med-Bio infrastructure can be leverage when writing a new grant proposal.

Although our hardware has a 5 year projected lifespan, we are already looking to support its continuation and growth via the inclusion of requests for suitable funds on all new grant proposals that will make use of it. We can work with you to provide appropriate costs for the type and amount of storage and compute additions best suited to your proposal; leveraging the existing infrastructure in a highly cost-effective way. In return for this, the project infrastructure can be included in sections on ‘Institutional Support and facilities’ for your proposal, as well as any specific points in the case for support, data sharing statements etc.

UK Med-Bio is supported by a full-time bioinformatician and a systems administrator, and for large projects extending beyond March 2019, it may be appropriate to include costs to underwrite some of their time.  

Where extensive bioinformatics support or software development is required for a new project, we interact directly with the Bioinformatics Data Science Group (BDSG) (wiki [College login required], site) to cost appropriate resources that may span both groups.

H0w UK Med-Bio can help

UK Med-Bio can help with the preparation of grant proposals that require access to high-performance biocomputing resources (including storage) and/or bioinformatics expertise as follows:

  • Providing estimates and cost preparation for new bio-medical projects using MED-BIO resources - including staff, HPC compute, software, large scale storage and tape-based archiving, other non-HPC services such as virtual machines for hosting project-specific websites, workflows and software stacks. This includes discussion of requirements,  InfoED sub-project costings and grant-ready justification of resources
  • Assistance with preparation of data-sharing and data-management plans for funding bodies where MED-BIO infrastructure will be used
  • Methodology advice, discussion and case-for-support-ready statements for some bioinformatics analyses, data management solutions, bespoke software, visualisation and data dissemination (including preparation of data and submission to public repositories, project web-sites).

At present, UK Med-Bio is not operating as a college TRAC facility and so hourly costs are not available for inclusion in grant proposals. 

How the BDSG can help

The BDSG are able to help with the preparation of grant proposals requiring bioinformatics resources and/or expertise as follows (their work extends beyond the bio-medical remit of UK MED-BIO into other areas of science using bioinformatics resources):

  • Providing specialist CO-I support, including supporting letters, track record etc.
  • Providing part-post named bioinformatics researchers and/or biosoftware developers for project work (with established track records)
  • Providing access to dedicated servers, software, databases and storage
  • Discussion and advice on some types of experimental design (e.g. biological and technical replicates, depth of coverage, insert sizing for NGS-based projects). Please note that this does not extend to power calculations for clinical research studies.
  • Methodology advice, discussion and case-for-support-ready statements for bioinformatics analyses, data management solutions, bespoke software, visualisation and data dissemination (including preparation of data and submission to public repositories, project websites).
  • Provisioning estimates and cost preparation for bioinformatics analyses including staff, software, storage – including InfoED sub-project costings and grant-ready justification of resources.
  • Specification of compute hardware and storage for specific bioinformatics projects (including obtaining vendor quotations where required).
  • Assistance with preparation of data-sharing and data-management plans for funding bodies.
Faculty of MedicineWiki (requires login)

Contact us

For any questions, issues or suggestions, please reach us at 

medbio-help@imperial.ac.uk

UK Med-Bio is funded by the MRC

MR/L01632X/1