NISTH INnovation and TRansformation for Outstanding ECRs (INTRO-ECR) Grant
Background of the Grant
Global society is rapidly pivoting towards recognising and taking at face value the problem-solving skills, opinions, and expertise of its youth. In the 21st century, young people are recognised as bastions of commitment to societal causes, unconventional approaches to solving global problems, and collaboration. Incidentally, here, the youth share a similar mission to academics: To innovate collaboratively to solve the world’s most pressing issues. At NISTH, we thought that this raises a curious question: Who are the youth in academia, and what can we do to support their work? The answer that we arrived at is Early Career Researchers (ECRs).
This grant call, therefore, intends to empower the youth of academia. This is because ECRs are a vital portion of an increasingly literate and savvy youth movement. Young researchers boast a childlike curiosity about the world whetted with a keen sense of rational and critical thinking. Thanks to modern advents in education and technological opportunities that their predecessors never had, they are well-equipped with domain-specific knowledge and skillsets to accelerate shaping scientific breakthroughs, technological innovations, and policy recommendations. That, and modern emphases on interdisciplinarity and interconnectedness serve to call to the fore a priority for collaborative problem-solving among a diverse group of academics. In NISTH’s programmes involving ECRs, we see that bringing ECRs with interdisciplinary research interests together can spark well-rounded all-encompassing conversations that collate research-backed opinions. This confluence of expertise gives rise to thought-provoking and unexpected development of solutions that enable questioning established science paradigms for their value in facing modern-day challenges.
Championing interdisciplinary research and promoting the collaborative approach to address the most pressing needs of the present, NISTH is proud to launch a grant call “INnovation and TRansformation for Outstanding ECRs (INTRO-ECR)”.
This grant enables NTU early career researchers to leverage intra- and inter-university networks to branch out their current research topics with the aim of developing ideas within and beyond their research training. Unlike other grants, this grant will aid in building bottom-up, cross-university, and multidisciplinary connections in the research area.
The Grant
This grant awards seed funding for three to six months to build and leverage interdisciplinary networks with the aim to produce a community-relevant outcome. The outcomes of this collaborative project will lead to creating powerful public impact through a series of workshops, focus group discussions, forums, citizen science, close work with the community or testing their earlier research developments. Above all, this grant musters a strong, interdisciplinary network of the brightest young minds, united in a call towards a better future.
Objectives
- Validate a novel research idea or approach that aims to contribute to solving an important societal challenge;
- Support the creation of new, inclusive research partnerships and sustained global networks that span technical and non-technical fields with a common interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary or transdisciplinary interest in solving pressing societal needs;
- Foster community building among researchers from academia, industry, government, and members of civil society across Singapore; and
- Seek novel approaches in communicating interdisciplinary research to educate and cultivate interests, knowledge, and competencies among stakeholders in NTU and the community at large.
Eligibility
- A team of at least two principal investigators (PIs) who are ECRs* can apply for the NISTH Grant, both of whom must be from NTU. ECRs must have at least 6 months of their contract remaining at the time of application.
- The team should have one ECR from either the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CoHASS), S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Business School (NBS) or S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) AND one ECR from LKC School of Medicine (LKCMed), College of Science (CoS) or College of Engineering (COE).
- The team is encouraged to invite ECRs from other Singapore’s universities as Collaborators.
- Collaborators from other external parties are highly encouraged.
- The team must prepare the Endorsement Letter from the NTU faculty member, who agrees to act as a supervisor, advise the project, and serve a supervisory or consultatory role.
- The team must report to NISTH about their research progress at intervals identified and agreed upon by ECRs and NISTH. This includes, but is not limited to, providing written updates to NISTH about the progress of the team’s work during the grant period.
- Submitted proposals should have an interdisciplinary focus at their core, explore new approaches and research topics, and include other communities (i.e., researchers from academia, industry, and civil society). PIs must clearly define their proposed new research topic and related societal challenge, the anticipated societal impact, justify the proposed overall approach, indicate, and justify the activities they are seeking to have supported, identify experts they will engage, specify the goal, objectives, expected outcomes, desired impact and how the impact will be measured.
*ECR = research assistant, research associate, research fellow
Funding Details
The use of the grant can include but is not limited to:
- Organising events such as seminars, research study groups, symposia, research or community workshops, community engagement studies or conference;
- Citizen science activities, such as conducting strategic scenario planning workshops involving different stakeholders (i.e., citizens, academia, government, NGOs, and industry) or creating resources useful for planning and running citizen science projects;
- Creating communication platforms or media to engage and educate the community, such as visualisations, visual abstracts, videos, animations, open-access databases, publications, or websites to involve the community in decision-making or to solve community immediate needs; and
- Academic publishing, including reports.
Applications will be considered for funding of up to $5,000 for the entire research project with a duration period of three to six months.
NISTH encourages interested ECRs to approach us if they have ideas, but face difficulties in putting together the requirements to meet this grant call (e.g., finding a co-PI).
Application Details
NTU ECRs may submit their application via the following link by 3 February 2023, 5 pm, Singapore local time.
Online NISTH INtro ECR Grant Application Form
Only submissions with a fully completed application form and CVs will be accepted for evaluation and assessment for awarding of grants. After an initial review, a subset of applications will be selected to provide additional detail (e.g., budgeting, project timeline, etc.).
Grant Documents:
The online Grant Application Form can be found here:
NISTH INTRO-ECR Grant _ form (pdf)
Endorsement letter (pdf)
If you are unable to access the online form, kindly use this form and email it to [email protected]:
For any enquiries or should you require assistance in identifying research partners across disciplines, please feel free to approach us at [email protected]
NTU Institute of Science and Technology for Humanity (NISTH)
Launched in March 2019, NTU’s Institute of Science and Technology for Humanity offers a platform for interdisciplinary collaborative research into disruptive materials and technologies, data analytics and AI for the benefit of humanity.
NISTH is an interdisciplinary centre of excellence that seeks to make sense of how technological advances impact societies, cultures and human behaviour. The Institute will bolster NTU’s ability to contribute towards Singapore’s vision of becoming a Smart Nation and will focus particularly on the impact of the fourth technological revolution on urban Asia. The Institute adopts a thematic approach that cuts across broad subject areas such as artificial intelligence, big data and health sciences.
The theme is ‘20 years from 2020’ where we imagine a time period of 20 years to find solutions to the challenges Singaporean society and people globally are facing today. NISTH brings together key scientists, scholars, industries and leaders to execute change for the benefit of humanity.
We seek to support interdisciplinary cutting-edge research that is designed to positively impact society while also leading to strong scholarship that results in leading peer-reviewed outputs and successful follow-up grants.