In ‘Spotlight on…’ we showcase different teams across campus, to give you a better understanding of who does what at Macquarie. This week, we meet the Pre Award team.

Who are you?

We are the Pre Award team from Research Services, and there are three main services we provide:

Research Partnerships Managers: Identify, develop and manage relationships with private sector, government and philanthropic organisations and industry groups, and identify and facilitate research funding opportunities. Our Research Partnerships Managers are Mark Berlage, Daniel Johnston, and J-L Heylen.

Proposals Team: Provides advice and support to ensure compliance with funding rules and is responsible for proposal submissions. The Proposals Team consists of three Proposals Officers – Fiona Collison, Rebecca Syler and Donna Burgess – and is led by Team Leader Anita Quinn.

Research Development Managers: Work closely with researchers to develop highly competitive track records and applications. Our Research Development Managers are Courtney Bendall (NHMRC) and Ross Hill (ARC).

The Manager of the Pre Award team is Erin Semon.

What do you do?

In a nutshell, we are a professional services team who facilitate identifying, developing and managing the carriage of high-quality research in the form of corporate partnership or grant applications to funders within Australia and beyond. The teams within Pre Award offer specialist services to support a range of activities from grant applications and collaborative research partnerships, to internal research funding schemes.

Why do you do it?

The Pre Award team is excited by the opportunity to work with our amazing researchers and to help them secure the funding and partnerships that contribute innovative solutions to some of our world’s biggest problems.

Ross Hill, Research Development Manager, aptly notes: “We are lucky enough to work with researchers from all disciplines on their newest ideas and assist them in having the best chance of being awarded funding. And when a grant is successful, we share in the researcher’s excitement.”

Any frequent misunderstandings or misconceptions about what your team does?

Great question! Common misconceptions:

• We write grant applications. In fact, we don’t! We do, however, help researchers with their applications. Researchers are the subject matter experts for their research and need to draft the applications. We are the subject matter experts when it comes to funding schemes, navigating contracts and IP negotiations, and assisting with research contracts. We can help, but we can’t write it for you.
• Eligibility and compliance checking are ‘nice to have’ but not necessary. Nope! These are very important steps in the submission of a funding proposal. The feedback we provide during eligibility and compliance checks ensures that funding applications will make it to the assessment panels.
• We can project manage your research projects. We can help you apply for funding and we can assist you with your research partnerships, but we do not project manage your projects.
• Internal deadlines for grant submissions are an exercise in organisational bureaucracy. We know how much work and time researchers put into funding proposals and we want to see each application submitted by Macquarie having the highest possible chance of success. For every ARC or NHMRC application submitted, the Pre Award team invests more than 15 hours of time strategically reviewing, eligibility and compliance checking, and offering advice for improvements along the way. The internal deadlines ensure there is enough time for us to give researchers meaningful feedback and for the researchers to incorporate our feedback into their proposals prior to submission.

What’s a recent achievement you’re proud of?

Every time a researcher is awarded funding or secures that research partner they were working towards, the Pre Award team celebrates.

The Research Partnerships Managers’ recent ‘big wins’ include:

• Assisting with Macquarie’s successful bid to host a CRC, SmartCrete CRC
• Assisting with Macquarie’s successful bid for an ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology
• Assisting Macquarie’s submission to the NSW COVID-19 grant schemes which will make certain that Macquarie takes a lead in assisting NSW in responding to and managing the impacts of COVID-19.

Across the team, we were incredibly excited about the recent ARC Linkage Projects successes. The whole Pre Award team made contributions: from building partnerships (Research Partnerships Managers) to developing a competitive application (Ross Hill) to ensuring eligibility and compliance with the schemes complex rules (Proposals Team). In this scheme Macquarie had 8 of 13 applications successfully funded (61.5% success rate, total of $3,135,293). Nationally, Macquarie was ranked 7th in the number of approved applications, 4th in success rate, and 8th in approved ARC funding.

We are also proud to work within an award-winning professional team. Ross Hill was awarded the Australasian Research Management Society (ARMS) and CSIRO Award for Excellence in Research Management Practice in 2017. The Proposals Team was awarded the ARMS and CSIRO Award for Excellence in Research Management Practice in 2018. Fiona Collison, Proposals Officer, was awarded the ARMS 2019 Chapter Travel Awards Program to attend the ARMS Adelaide conference in September 2019.

What’s planned for the future?

The recent launch of the University’s new Operating Plan will create exciting new opportunities for the Pre Award team. We look forward to helping Macquarie with the research income goals and are keen to see how our input will help increase research funding opportunities across campus.

How can we engage with you?

To learn more and to contact us, visit the research funding and grants opportunities website.