Innovation Seed Fund

Through our Innovation Seed Fund grants, we aim to pump-prime innovative research into the causes, treatment and diagnosis of hearing loss, tinnitus and other hearing-related conditions.

We want to support novel research ideas with the aim of making them more competitive and able to secure follow-on funding.

The fund will also support small-scale projects at the translational stage, such as proof-of-concept studies or pre-clinical validation studies, again with the aim of making novel approaches more competitive for further funding.

All proposals should be able to demonstrate how they will contribute to ultimately bringing benefit to people with hearing loss, tinnitus or other hearing-related conditions. They should be highly novel and/or innovative – potentially risky ideas are welcome.

Awards are usually made in March each year.

Recent projects we have funded

Detecting hidden hearing loss using an antiphasic speech test, University of Southampton, UK
Development of an adenoid organoid for the study of otitis media with effusion in children, Newcastle University, UK
Enhancing Infant Cochlear Implant Care: Objective fNIRS Method for Assessing Loudness Levels and Thresholds, The Bionics Institute, Australia
Cochlear Adaptation: Characterising the cochlear microenvironment following cochlear implantation to understand hearing performance and identify novel therapeutic targets, University of Cambridge, UK
From Clinical Observations to Animal Models: Investigating GABAergic Neuropathology in Tinnitus, University Medical Center Groningen, Netherlands.

Summary of grant

Deadline

Thursday 19 December 2024

Value

Up to a maximum of £10,000

Eligibility

Applicants can be from a university, research institute, or small or medium enterprise based anywhere in the world

In the last round of Flexi Grant funding (March 2024), we received 27 applications and awarded funding to 5 projects.

How to apply

All applications should be submitted via our online grant management system, Flexi-Grant. There’s further guidance on Flexi-Grant about how to complete your application below.

Before applying, please read the supporting documents.

Selection procedure

All proposals are reviewed by our Innovation Seed Fund review panel (usually three members per proposal). They judge the scientific merit of the proposal, as well as its novelty and feasibility. RNID use these reviews to select the best projects to fund.

Applicants will be notified of the outcome as soon as possible, usually within three months of the application deadline.

Everyone involved in the review process of any grant application is asked to abide by our code of conduct.

Innovation Seed Fund review panel

Emma Kenyon, University of Swansea
Haruna Suzuki-Kerr, University of Auckland
Joseph Sollini, University of Nottingham
Magdalena Zak, University College London
Richard Gault, Queens University Belfast
Samuel Webb, University of Sheffield
Soha Garadat, University of Jordan, Amman/University of Michigan
Tobias Goehring, University of Cambridge
John Newell, Macquarie University
Chris Hardy University, College London
Emanuele Perugia, University of Manchester
Michael Mather, Newcastle University
Jason Powell, Newcastle University
Adam Carlton, University of Sheffield
Carlos Fransico Aguilar Hernandez, University College London
Rudiger Land, Hannover Medical School
Rebecca Vos, University of Salford
Vassilis Pelekenos, University of Nottingham
Hannah Keppler, Ghent University
Sriram Boothalingam, Macquarie University
Sherylanne Newton, University College London.

Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC) and open access publications

RNID is a member of the Europe PMC Funders’ Group. We support open access publications and require RNID grant holders to make their publications open access.

Read our open access publication policy for more information and visit the Europe PMC website.

Contact us

For more information about the Innovation Seed Fund review panel, please get in touch.

Email: [email protected]