Call for the establishment of 2 new Flagship Centres between OUH and SDU in 2024, phase 2

Application deadline is 15 September 2024, 12 p.m. (12.00)

	Launch of call	Application deadline	Deadline for response to applicants
Phase 2 (ONLY BY INVITATION)	June 1st	September 15th, 2024 (12 p.m.)	October 30th, 2024

Phase 3 - Pitch (only by invitation)

December 6th 2024

This call is relevant only for applicants whose proposals were accepted in the prequalification round. (phase 1)

OUH and SDU invite applicants whose proposal was accepted in Phase 1 to submit a Phase 2 appli-cation regarding establishment of a Flagship centre between OUH and SDU. It is expected that the flagship centre will be established January 1st 2025.

Content of phase 2 application

Your phase 1 proposal must be expanded by a detailed description of work packages, international partners, planned PhD programmes and postdoctoral fellowships, governance structure and expected number of publications and other deliverables and milestones. Furthermore, a detailed description of the budget, including external funding, is required.

As such the application as a whole should reflect that the research performed is at the highest interna-tional level, that interdisciplinary and translational elements play a significant role and that the pro-posal is innovative and an advancement on the current state of the art.

Your Phase 2 application

• must be written in English.
• must not exceed 21 A4 pages including figures, tables, etc.
• must not exceed 63,000 characters including spaces, figure captions, formulas, etc.

Front page, table of content, list of references and Danish summary are excluded from the above count as well as appendices. You must use

• the font Times New Roman
• font size 12
• at least 2 cm margin on the left, right, top and bottom
• line spacing of 1.5.

Tables and figure texts must be readable by using at least font size 10 and line spacing 1.0.

All objectives, requirements, etc. from the Phase 1 call still prevail.

The phase 2 application should follow the outline below

Detailed project description

• A summary in English (max 500 words each)
• Background, idea/overall ambition, objectives, etc. (max 500 words)
• Description of the current state of the art and the projects novelty
• Expected impact of the Flagship centre. E.g. expected impact in regard to patients, staff, technology, economics, society, research and/or education. .
• Description of how patients and relatives will be involved in the flagship centre.
• Description of work packages and protocols
  • Work packages: E.g., study type (observational, interventional, laboratory etc.), overall aim, WP leader, description of trials/study’s in WP, synergy with other WPs
  • Protocols to be performed within the first 2 years should be detailed (max 1000 words) with
    PI, Background, Hypotheses, Methods, Statistic deliberations, including power calculation, also regarding animal research, Endpoints, Anticipated publication(s), Time frame
  • Note: A Gantt chart should be added in the appendix, including a list of deliverables and mile-stones for all work packages.
• A more detailed description of the governance structure, management structure and the manage-ment skills
• Description of national and international partners and their role in the Centre (core partners)
• Description of planned PhD programmes and Postdoctoral fellowships (career pathways)

Appendices

• Gantt chart / time line
• Deliverables and milestones
• Detailed budget: Total budget for the first 5-year period, sub-budgets for each year and infor-mation about external funding. The budget must be approved prior to submission by either For-skningsservice at OUH or a corresponding unit at SDU. Please apply this template.
• CVs for primary participants (max. 2 pages each)
• Letters of collaboration
• List of references
• Funding and dissemination strategies (optional)
• Phase 1 application.
• Layman summary in Danish

How to submit the Phase 2 application

The deadline for phase 2 applications is September 15th 2024, at 12.00 p.m. (12.00).

Please upload your propoasal and appendices in efond.

Questions may be forwarded to ouh.forskning@rsyd.dk   

Assessment procedure

Phase 2 proposals will be submitted for external international review by three reviewers per proposal. The reviewers will be chosen by the heads of departments from the Faculty of Health Sciences at SDU in cooperation with heads of departments from other relevant faculties.

The three reviewers will score the proposals on a number of themes with a focus on scientific quality and excellence, innovation, interdisciplinarity, translational aspects, risk/reward, perspectives for soci-etal impact etc. and up to three projects with the highest average scores will proceed to phase 3. The assessment criteria can be found as a appendix to this call.

Phase 3:

Please mark December 6th 2024 in your calendar. On this day the final applicants will be given the op-portunity to present their proposal in front of a panel consisting of:

• Dean Simon Møberg Torp, The Faculty of Humanities
• Dean Ole Skøtt, The Faculty of Health Sciences
• Dean Henrik Bindslev, The Faculty of Engineering
• Dean Marianne Holmer, The Faculty of Science
• Acting Dean Hanne Søndergaard Birkmose, The Faculty of Business and Social Sciences
• Medical Director Kim Brixen
• Medical Director Bjarne Dahler Eriksen

The panel will assess the proposals for flagship centres based on strategic relevance, crossdiscipli-narity and on its prospects for clinical application. In addition to the pitch the panel will also have ac-cess to the proposals and the reviewers scores and comments.

The panel will then select the new Flagship Centre between OUH and SDU, and the announcement of the New Flagship Centre is expected immediately after the meeting.

Other guests at the Pitch-meeting will be members from the RI-council, Heads of involved Depart-ments at SDU, members from the OUH Research Council, and members of the executive boards at OUH and SDU respectively.

Follow-up with:

Applicants who are not awarded grant for Flagship centre

• Applicants who submit an application for phase 2, but who are not awarded a grant for a flag-ship centre, will be invited to a follow-up meeting with the director of research at OUH, the rel-evant deans from the faculties involved, SDU RIO and Southern Denmark Research Support. Focus will be how the applications can be developed and supported in the pursuit for external funding.
• Your application will be shared with the deans, contact person from SDU RIO and Southern Denmark Research Support.

Applicants who are awarded grant for Flagship centre

• Individual performance contracts are concluded with each new flagship centre.
• In each performance contract individual targets will be set for quantity and quality in research, education and PhD students, postdocs, external funding and international cooperation.
• The performance is evaluated externally by the international Advisory Board and internally by the steering committee. The first internal evaluation will take place early 2026.
• The Board of Directors from OUH and SDU respectively will be informed about the status of each center performance at joint meetings between the two institutions.