Dear colleagues

This message is from the DVC Designate, Professor Sue Harrison

Research at UCT has grown significantly in the past two decades. In stark contrast, national funding for research has been shrinking and will likely continue to do so. Many of our researchers have already responded by seeking (and winning) international funding, and more and more of our researchers will need to follow suit.

The university needs to support this growth, both to enable continued and even increased success at winning international grants, and to ensure that it manages the financial, human-resource and legal risks involved. For instance, if a researcher does not fully consider factors like inflation, exchange-rate fluctuation and indirect costs in their budget, this puts additional financial pressure on both the project and the university. When researchers are not protected from such errors and find themselves unable to meet their funder requirements, this leads to reputational damage with funding agencies that will impact negatively on subsequent applications.

The electronic Research Administration (eRA) system, developed to bring a number of research administration processes online, will help the university support international grant applications more effectively. In August this year, the eRA pre-awards module – already piloted in the IDM and Health Sciences Faculty – will be rolled out across campus. This will provide a much-needed online consistency check and application work flow to help PIs plan effectively for external – and particularly international – grants.

In order to achieve this, the process involved of applying for external grants will need to be standardised across the university. This allows central research support offices to assist at the point where they are needed, and helps the institution to flag both with PIs and their faculty deans where there are areas of risk.

Thanks to the eRA system this process is now also streamlined and automated. The system takes much of the bureaucratic burden off the researcher, while ensuring that by the time they submit their application to the funder, all the fine print has been taken care of.

This system, and the change in processes required when it is rolled out, aims to ensure that UCT researchers continue to uphold their excellent reputation with international funders and increase their already outstanding success rate.

The eRA team will shortly begin engaging with researchers in each faculty to find out more about how this pre-awards module is likely to affect existing research processes in individual disciplines, and how this can be managed to the benefit of researchers.

If you wish to set up such a meeting within your own research unit or department, please do contact our Research Office internal communications officer, Natalie Simon

A Research Announcement will be coming your way later this week with more detail about the rollout of the pre-awards module – I ask that you look out for it, read it carefully and ensure that it reaches the attention of all those you work with to whom it may be relevant.

The Research Announcement is produced by the Research Office, University of Cape Town.