Friday, October 3, 2008

ARC future fellowships

The Australian Research Council has announced the ARC Future Fellowships. This is a new scheme of research funding for mid-career researchers.
the interesting bits in the announcement:
  • applicant must be 5 to 15 years from PhD
  • up to 140,000AUD salary 
  • 4 years
  • 1000 fellowships available over 5 years (across all research fields)
  • deadline november 26
according to the announcement one of the aims of this scheme is "to attract australian researchers currently based overseas to return to australia".

It will be interesting to see how many of these fellowships will go to computer science (and if any will go to theoretical computer science).

the assessment criteria are as follows:
  • applicant 50% (that's the applicant's CV)
  • strategic alignment 15% (alignment with host institution's research strengths)
  • collaboration 15%
  • national priorities 10%
  • ... and the least significant, least important aspect: the proposed research for which you will be funded for four years, 10%
so, 90% of the weight of the assessment criteria is not related to the proposed research.
The ARC will look at the technical part of the research proposal last, if at all.