Royal Society Faraday Discovery Fellowships

Candidate eligibility:

Have between 10-20 years research post-PhD or equivalent experience.
Be a recognised research leader within their field with experience of managing significant research grants as the Principal Investigator.
Hold a permanent academic post or be in the latter stages of a recognised long-term research fellowship or have equivalent research experience.
Demonstrate significant and original research contributions be able to demonstrate significant research contributions in the last 10 years.
Should have well-established international networks and plans to consolidate their independence to become international research leaders in their field.
Demonstrate wider contributions to research, research impact and research culture.
Resubmissions are permitted, as long as the candidate still meets the eligibility criteria.

Note that our experience from Round 1 is that if applicants focus on only their excellence, then they are unlikely to go through to full proposal stage, as they are competing on a global stage. They will need to offer something more within their vision and development of their programme of work to make them stand out.

Scope

The Royal Society will consider applications from all areas of science (STEM) that are covered by the Royal Society remit and will not operate thematic priorities for the scheme. This may include:

Frontiers of Science – examples might include research into quantum, materials, earth observation, engineering biology and understanding the microbial world.

Science for Resilience and Prosperity - examples might include research into waste, future telecoms, scarce resources, protecting planetary life support systems, life in extreme environmental conditions, science and engineering of cutting-edge technologies, batteries, AI and Net Zero.

The above are examples only. Applications that do not fit under the headings of Frontiers of Science and Science for Resilience and Prosperity are welcome.The Society will assess applications in all areas of STEM purely on the basis of the track record of the candidate and the quality and vision of the proposed research.

Further information on the scheme can be found at Faraday Discovery Fellowships | Royal Society.

Internal candidates should submit (with 2cm margins and 11 pt Arial font max) by 21 August 2025:

CV (3 pages max)
Lay summary (250 words)
Research vision (2 sides max)

Please combine these components into a single PDF for submission. More details on what the RS is looking for in these can be found in the scheme notes.