MRC Pilot Projects with the UK Human Functional Genomics Initiative

Pilot project funding to enable researchers to collaborate with the UK Human Functional Genomics Initiative via either a purely academic route or an academic with an industrial partner.

The Medical Research Council (MRC) has launched this opportunity to enable applicants to apply for pilot project funding to collaborate with the UK Human Functional Genomics (FGx) Initiative by one of two routes:

• Academic only.
• Academic with an industrial partner.

The projects should build and strengthen collaborations across the UK Human Functional Genomics Initiative and wider UK FGx community through feasibility, pilot or initial studies to provide preliminary experiments to explore ideas and generate initial data which could support the development of competitive collaborative grant proposals for longer term projects. 

Areas of potential interest include (but are not limited to):

• Generation of novel functional genomic annotations in disease-relevant cell types.
• Development of novel methods.
• Functional perturbation of disease systems.
• Development of models for functional genomics.
• Data science and computational approaches for functional genomics.

Technology priming projects that support the FGx initiative, functional genomics screening lab (FGSL) or a specific research cluster are welcome. Projects that offer to bring in specific knowledge or contributions to the initiative are encouraged.

Projects are expected to be between three and 12 months in duration.