BIRAX Partners Forum, London, 2023
In spring 2023, during UK-Israel Science Days, 24 representatives from medical charities, philanthropy, government, and the British Embassy in Israel joined the British Council at the BIRAX Partners’ Forum. It was an occasion to discuss pivotal aspects of our programmes and raise focus points for future collaboration. On the same day, BIRAX grantees, both senior and early career researchers from the UK and Israel, took part in a BIRAX workshop to develop their own recommendations for the future of the programme.
The main conclusions and takeaways of the partners were as follows:
1. Modularity and Flexibility:
- Academic mobility programs should cater to varied audience needs. For instance, early-career researchers seek skill development, while established ones aim to forge new contacts.
- Seed funding should feature a modular structure, accommodating diverse research fields (e.g., academic mobility training, equipment, consumables).
- Selection processes need to strike a balance between thorough competitiveness and streamlined efficiency, especially with seed funding.
2. Removing Barriers for Women:
- Identify barriers to women's participation in our programmes and implement measures to address them across all programme components.
- Tailored mentorship programmes for women can encourage and accelerate the advancement of women in academic careers.
3. Mentoring:
- A comprehensive mentoring and training programme can assist early career researchers in navigating their initial steps as researchers.
- The programme should concentrate on enhancing capacity by providing training in submitting funding proposals, improving presentation skills, and refining storytelling abilities.
4. Modeling New Programme Elements:
- The forum recognized two additional elements for enhancing BIRAX's impact: integrating global collaborative seed grants and instituting a mentorship scheme for early career researchers.
- Emphasis was placed on evidence-based and best practice-driven modeling of these new elements. While adapting industry experience to formulate both, the following crucial areas were suggested for deeper investigation: robust tools for measuring the impact of seed grants and mentoring, and funding strategies for projects with uncertain and challenging-to-quantify outcomes within the grant period
See below for the full report.