Clinician Scientist Positions | Medical Sciences

Objective

This funding instrument is offered only by DFF | Medical Sciences. With this grant, you can carry out specific research for 1-3 years so that you dedicate 20-50 % of your total working time annually to research remunerated by DFF, and spend the remaining time in your clinical position, remunerated by the institution where the clinical employment takes place.

About the applicant

The application must be submitted by the person who wishes to be awarded the clinician scientist position. 

It is a requirement that you hold a PhD degree or equivalent qualifications at the time of application. Funding is primarily awarded to medical doctors, dentists and veterinarians.

At the time of employment, applicants must be employed in a clinical position (including specialist training positions) that offers no possibility of carrying out research during working hours. Please note that the council prioritises applications where the applicant’s clinical position involves patient treatment.

It is a prerequisite that you maintain clinical employment for 50-80% of the time throughout the entire grant period, and that no time is allocated to research during these working hours. During the grant period, you are thus employed part-time by your own institution as both a researcher remunerated by DFF funds and as a clinician remunerated by the institution.

Grants may be awarded to both established clinical researchers and promising early-career clinical researchers, who wish to maintain a research focus alongside their clinical work.

About the application

When writing an application to the fund, you must pay special attention to ensuring that the application fulfils the objective of the funding instrument and that it meets the fund’s assessment criteria.

The council places emphasis on supporting innovative research, especially by contributing to increasing our knowledge of clinical subjects.

In the application, you must explain how a clinician scientist position that includes clinical work and research, would function in practice and how a clinician scientist position would enable synergies between clinic practice and research.

The application must be written in English.

Budget

Your application can only cover funding of your personal salary during 20–50% of your annual working hours while dedicated to the research project. This means that the council covers all salary expenses during the time spent on research. You cannot apply for funding for equipment and operating expenses. Please note that it is still mandatory to attach a complete budget. 

You must have secured funding for your clinical position in advance. The part of your salary which is financed by the council is based on applicable collective agreements. The remuneration will correspond to the salary for the clinical position, with the exception of special supplements for clinical functions (e.g. on-call supplements) and special academic functions (PhD supplement, supervisor supplement, etc.).

Please note that you can only apply for funding of expenses to the administrating institution, i.e. the place of employment in the clinical position. The research activity does not necessarily have to be carried out in the employing clinical department, but the council requires the grant to be administered by the institution where the clinical work takes place. 

The budget must be completed in the mandatory budget template, which can be downloaded from e-grant.

Project description and appendices

There are a number of mandatory appendices that must always be attached, as well as additional appendices that must be included if relevant. You can read more about the general requirements for the contents of the project description and appendices in section 8 in the call and the budget in section 9 in the call.

Please pay special attention to the fact that there are character and page limits for both the project description and the applicant's CV. Exceeding these limits will result in an administrative rejection. It is always the character count generated by e-grant that applies. You can find more information in section 8.2 in the call.