Call OUH Fund for Pre-graduate Stipends

Call for proposals 2nd round 2024

Round	Launch of call	Application deadline	Assessment meeting
2	19 March 2024	7 May 2024 (11.59 p.m.)	11 June 2024 (expected)
1	Mid-September 2024 (expected)	Early November 2024 (11.59 p.m.) (expected)	Mid-December 2024 (expected)

Objective

“The patient first” is the underlying principle of OUH’s ambition in creating value for our patients. To offer the best treatment, retain and attract the best qualified staff to the benefit of patients, it is the ambition of OUH to strengthen research at the hospital. As one of several initiatives to reach this objective, OUH has set aside funding for pre-graduate stipends as the first step in a visible career path.  

Each applicant may apply for a maximum amount of DKK 60,000 for a total of six months from the OUH Fund for Pre-graduate Stipends.

Annually, a maximum of 16 stipends are available from the OUH Fund for Pre-graduate Stipends.

Requirements for applicants

Eligible applicants are pre-graduate students from all disciplines doing a research year at OUH.

Research within all health disciplines including clinical patient related research, research of epidemiology, experimental laboratory research and Health Services is covered by the OUH Pre-graduate Fund.

The application must be submitted by the pre-graduate student.

Both the supervisor for a pre-graduate student and the pre-graduate student are asked to note the following requirements:  

Organisational requirements

• Only one application for each main supervisor will be considered for each application round.
• Main or co supervisor must be employed at OUH.
• Only projects which have already obtained approval from the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) before the application deadline are eligible.
• The main part of the project must be carried out at Odense University Hospital or Svendborg Hospital
• The application must be approved by the supervisor and host department at OUH prior to submission.

Project requirements

• The pre-graduate student must be supervised in drawing up the application, securing its structure and that a clear purpose is stated in the application.
• The project must be outlined in a way so that the pre-graduate student can carry out independent tasks feasible for a one-year project.
• If the pre-graduate project is part of a full scale research project, the pre-graduate sub-project must be well-defined and the role of the pre-graduate student specified.
• The pre-graduate student must play a significant role in the proposed research activity and the tasks and motivation of the pre-graduate student for conducting a research year and the particular research project must be clearly described in the application.

Budget

The SDU Graduate School of Health Sciences states that financing a pre-graduate research year consists of the following options:

• 6 months of SU during the thesis semester
• 6 months of salary from a scholarship, e.g. the OUH Pre-graduate Fund or an external fund covering the period of time where a pre-graduate student must take an absence of leave from studies, and therefore cannot receive SU. If a scholarship for salary is not granted, an SDU scholarship disbursement may be applied.

Eligible costs

• 6 months of salary, equivalent of DKK 60,000 for the pre-graduate student.

In the budget section step 3 in efond, please state which year a possible grant from the OUH pre-graduate Fund is to be applied for:

• Year 1 = 2024
• Year 2 = 2025

If a possible grant is to be divided between two years, please indicate number of months for each year.

Non-eligible costs

• Salary for other researchers (SCS in English and VIP in Danish)
• Co-financing of non-scientific staff (NSS in English, TAP in Danish)
• Purchase of apparatus or operating expenses.
• Overhead due to the fact that the OUH Fund for Pre-graduate Stipends is a local fund.

External funding

A minimum of two external foundations must be applied for funding of the pre-graduate project. Information about which foundations you have applied or anticipate to apply for funding and for which budget headings must be included in the application.

Grants from the OUH Fund for Pre-graduate Stipends must be reimbursed if funding for salary is received from elsewhere. It will not be possible to receive funding from both the OUH Pre-graduate Fund and an SDU scholarship disbursement.

Budget assistance

The OUH Research Support offers instructions on how to draw up a budget. If you request assistance, please contact reg.forskerservice@rsyd.dk.

Assessment criteria

Applications are being assessed according to the following criteria:

• The applicant
  • Motivation for carrying out and role in a pre-graduate research project
  • Qualifications – e.g. relevant classes in medical school, previous research experience, student job
• Research environment
  • Suitability of the research environment for carrying out the project and educating a pre-graduate student
• Scientific quality of the project (primary)
  • Clear hypothesis and suitable method
  • Feasibility of the project
  • The suitability of the project as a pre-graduate project
• Strategic considerations
  • Relevance of the project for the Research Strategy 2021 – 2025 of OUH and the Department of Clinical Research, SDU
  • Involvement of patients and relatives in the pre-graduate project (see “Considerations” below) or explanation if it is not deemed relevant
  • Information about how the entire pre-graduate research year is (expected to be) financed including applications for external funding.

How to submit an application

You must submit your application via the application system efond. Please read and comply with the instructions given in efond and attach the following appendices in PDF format: 

• Signed approval from both Head of Department and Head of Research at OUH stating that the project can be carried out at OUH
• Signed approval of the project from SDU
• Transcript of grades from the pre-graduate student’s Master’s degree programme
• Brief CV (max two pages) for the principal supervisor including
  • number of former and current pre-graduate students, 
  • lists of supervisor’s 10 most relevant publications in the past five years.
• Time schedule for your pre-graduate project.
• If the pre-graduate project is part of a larger project, a Gantt chart, timeline or similar showing how the goals of the pre-graduate project are placed in the overall project.If the pre-graduate student has already started the pre-graduate project, in step 2 of efond, please include a progression report describing obtained milestones, etc.

You will receive a confirmation by email from “efond” if your application is submitted correctly (please check your spam filter if you do not receive an email).

Language

Your application must be written in English. However, please note that the layman’s summary and the section regarding involvement of patients must be written in Danish.

Rejection of applications

Please note that an application may be rejected on an administrative basis if approvals from an OUH department and SDU are not included and if a minimum of two external foundations have not been or will be applied for funding.

Assessment procedure

The submitted applications will be reviewed and prioritised by the committee of the OUH Fund for Pre-graduate Stipends at an assessment meeting.

All applicants will receive notice of the outcome of the application approximately two weeks after the assessment meeting.

Considerations

Patients are members of the assessment committee and will be reviewing the applications with other members of the committee. The primary focus of the patients is on the layman’s description and description of patient involvement, why these parts must be understandable to a non-specialist.

Consequently, the layman’s summary in Danish should:

• be drawn up without applying technical terms and abbreviations and be a simple and accessible description of the project fit for publishing at the OUH website
• in the first paragraph address the research question, its applicability  including number of patients, and the need for solving the problem.
• contain purpose and hypothesis
• address non-specialists
• contain information about expected outcome (quantify the impact if possible)
• be read by a non-health professional prior to submitting the application.

Involvement of patients and their relatives

Please note that involvement of patients in the project does not equal treatment of patients.

Involving patients and relatives in the research process can help to ensure that the research focuses on the most important topics and issues from a patient perspective. Involvement by patients and relatives should be enhanced where it contributes the most value for the individual project and thus the value of the project to patients and society as a whole.

It is important to describe considerations about patient and relative involvement in the application. The involvement can take place throughout the entire research process – from the planning of the project to dissemination of the results that are generated. The main purpose of health research is obtaining results that will be beneficial for patients.

Examples of how and when patients and relatives can be involved:

• Clarification of research questions, outcome goals
• Reading the application – especially Danish sections (layman’s description, descriptions to Ethical Committee of Science)
• Dissemination of research results

Please find more inspiration at the ForSa-P (in Danish), VIBIS (in Danish) or NIHS in the UK.

Questions and contact information

Please forward questions to ouh.forskning@rsyd.dk.