Call for 4-year Childhood cancer research position

Aim
Barncancerfonden (The Swedish Childhood Cancer Fund) calls for proposals for 4-year Childhood cancer research position within the area of childhood cancer diseases. The purpose is to recruit more researchers to the field and to enable research for clinically active individuals employed in Swedish health care or equivalent.

Terms and conditions for the call
Grants may be applied for salary costs and indirect costs connected to the grant.
Research positions can be applied for within the areas for biomedical science and health care science including psychosocial research. The research projects may be experimental (fundamental or translational research) or clinical.
The results from the research related to the position are expected to be beneficial for children with cancer in Sweden and/or childhood cancer research in Sweden. The relevance for childhood cancer should therefore be clearly stated in the application. 

Eligibility to apply
4-year Childhood cancer research position is applied for by a researcher that holds a doctoral degree. 4-year Childhood cancer research position can be applied for within 7 years after dissertation. The applicant should intend to establish an own research program within the area of childhood cancer and intend to locate the main activity in Sweden. The position may be combined with a side activity of 20%, for example clinical work or teaching.

The time from dissertation may be prolonged under special circumstances, for example clinical work or parental leave (note that time to be excluded must be clearly stated in a separate document). Half- or full-time positions can be applied for. Half-time positions can be combined with up to 50% clinical work or other activities closely connected to pediatric oncology. Continuation grants after that may be allocated after individual evaluation, if considered particularly important for pediatric oncology.

Co-applicants
The main applicant should be the person the applied position is intended to finance.
4-year Childhood cancer research position is applied for without co-applicants.

About the grant
The grant is personal and may not be transferred to another individual. The grant is disbursed to administering organization.

Refer to the document Eligible costs for eligible costs for the grant form.

Barncancerfonden has some restrictions regarding parallel grants. Refer to the separate document Parallel grants from BCF on the web page of Barncancerfonden.

Grant sum
The sum of the grant is calculated according to the salary flat rate sums from Barncancerfonden. The grant includes holiday compensation and indirect costs. The actual salary of the application including expected salary raise should be stated in the budget.

Allocated grants for 4-year Childhood cancer research positions are combined with running costs of 500 000 SEK per year. The running costs do not need to be specified and justified in the budget.

Administration
The grant is to be administered by a Swedish university, hospital or institute, alternatively another Swedish organization with research as its main purpose in collaboration with a university, hospital or institute. Reduction of 15,25% for indirect costs is allowed. Any premises costs should be accommodated within this deduction. Remaining funding at the end of the project period is reimbursed to Barncancerfonden.

Organization of the application
Instructions on how to fill in the application form is found in the top right corner on each tab.

The application may be written either in English or in Swedish with the following exceptions: 

• The popular science title must be written in Swedish.
  • The project title must be written in English.
  • The popular science description must be written in Swedish.
  • The abstract must be written in English.

Application documents
The application system opens approximately two months prior to the last day for application. A complete application includes a filled-in web form and mandatory appendices. The appendices should be uploaded in PDF format and may not exceed 2 MB. Note that the application may not be submitted electronically if mandatory information is missing.

Mandatory attachments

• Project description
• Statement of time to be excluded (if >7 years after dissertation)

Content of the project description
The project description should have an overall aim and a number of specific goals. The aim may be visionary, but the goals should be written as specific as possible. The project goals should be directly comparable to the final report where the progress and results from the project will be described.

The project description should be maximum 6 A4 pages including references (12 ppt Times New Roman, single space, automatic line break) and contain the following headings:

• Aim and goals; present the overall aim and the specific goals of the research project.
  • Background; a summary of your own and others’ research, as well as previous findings in the research field.
  • Preliminary results; describe your own experiments and pre-studies in the research area
  • Work plan; summarize the project and present a timetable. Describe theories, methods and implementation.
  • Patient material; if the research project includes patient samples, the approximate number of patients should be stated, and if patients are children or adults. If a combination of samples is used, the distribution between child and adult samples should be stated. 
  • International and national collaboration: short description of collaboration with foreign and Swedish researchers and research groups or clinical partners. 
  • Ethical considerations
  • Five own publications that are most relevant to the project
  • Literature references of importance
  • If the main or co-applicant has allocated grants or other applications under review at Barncancerfonden that are similar to the present application, the differences between these and the present application should be described under a certain heading. 

Confirmation of the application
The application must be confirmed by the main applicant and the head of department, director or equivalent in order to be valid. The main applicant confirms the application in connection to submission. Note that the application must be submitted AND confirmed by the main applicant before the closure of the call. The day after the call has closed, an email with a request to confirm the application is sent to the head of department, director or equivalent you have stated in the application. Confirmation must be done no later than 7 days after the call has closed.

Application period
Refer to the web page of Barncancerfonden. Incomplete or late applications will not be evaluated.

Evaluation criteria
All submitted applications are subjected to peer review evaluation by active researchers based on the following criteria: research problem, methodology, feasibility/merits of the applicant(s), relevance for children oncology, and, when applicable, the scientific report.

Interviews of final candidates may be conducted.

General terms
Refer to the separate document ”General terms” in the application system.

Contact
For questions about the call contact:
forskning@barncancerfonden.se

or

Johanna Andrae, Forskningssamordnare
johanna.andrae@barncancerfonden.se
070-420 03 84