Development Grants

Research Office Contact:
research-applications@newcastle.edu.au

The Development Grants scheme provides financial support to individual researchers and/or research teams to undertake health and medical research within Australia at the proof of principle or pre-seed stage that specifically drives towards a commercial outcome within a foreseeable timeframe.

Scheme Objectives

The objectives of the Development Grant scheme are to:

• Increase, facilitate and expedite the translation of health and medical research outcomes through to commercialisation, within a foreseeable timeframe.
• Support proof-of-concept research with a feasible commercialisation pathway and a high likelihood of producing protected IP.
• Provide a potential mechanism through which research outcomes can be progressed to a stage that makes them competitive to receive industry investment through other government schemes or from the private sector.
• Encourage collaboration between health research, the private sector and industry (domestic and international).

2024 Structural Priorities

NHMRC’s current key structural priorities are:

• Funding for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health researchers
• Improving the health outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
• Achieving gender equity for female and non-binary lead investigators

Grant Period and Funding Available

Development Grants are funded for between one and three years. The provisional funding allocation for the 2024 round is $15 million. The amount of funding awarded will be based on an assessment of the requested budget.

Eligibility

At the time of acceptance and for the duration of a grant the CIA must be an Australian or New Zealand citizen, or a permanent resident of Australia and be based in Australia for at least 80% of the funding period. There is no limit to the number of Development Grants a CI can apply for or hold and Development grants do not impact eligibility to apply for any other NHMRC grants.

• An application may be excluded from further consideration if:
  It has a focus on the early stage or knowledge creation stages of research (i.e., research that is fundable through the Ideas Grant scheme).
• The primary objective is a clinical trial (these applications are relevant to the Clinical Trials and Cohort Studies scheme).
• It is beyond the proof-of-concept stage, and therefore more appropriate to receive support from other government agencies or the private sector.

Please note that partnerships with industry/commercial partner/s for the proposed research are not essential at the application stage. However, applicants must provide comprehensive evidence of their strategies to commercialise their product and bring it to market.

Sapphire

Development Grants are managed in Sapphire.

Video tutorials are available from the Sapphire Knowledge Base page and NHMRC has a dedicated Sapphire Help Desk.

For more information on how to activate your Sapphire account, please visit the NHMRC website

Please note: It is strongly recommended all applicants subscribe to the Research Office NHMRC mailing list for up to date information on this scheme.

Key Dates

Please note:

• Applicants are strongly encouraged to commence their application in Sapphire ASAP after the scheme opens so that they can book their preferred day for an Eligibility and Compliance Check.
• To enable the allocation of appropriate resourcing, bookings must be made prior to the defined scheme Eligibility and Compliance Check period. Access to book an Eligibility and Compliance Check will no longer be available once the Eligibility and Compliance Check period has commenced. This does not apply for schemes with continuous rounds (i.e. ARC Linkage Projects and NHMRC Partnership Projects).
• The University deadline for final application requires the provision of a submission-ready proposal to the Research Grants Office submitted via Sapphire, as well as a fully signed cover sheet.