Deadline: 01 December 2025

The ITOPF R&D Award provides financial support for projects aimed at enhancing knowledge and understanding of issues related to accidental marine pollution from ships. This initiative aims to encourage and facilitate organisations worldwide to develop ideas that can potentially offer solutions to some of the challenges faced by the spill response community. Up to £60,000 is available for short-term projects (1-2 years) and up to £40,000 for PhD projects (plus a student stipend and a contribution towards university fees).

Topic

The ITOPF R&D Award provides financial support for projects that have the potential to lead to improvements in our knowledge and understanding of issues related to accidental marine pollution from ships such as spill preparedness and response, techniques for monitoring, clean-up, resource protection and restoration, etc.

Eligibility

The ITOPF R&D Award is open to any reputable R&D establishment or other organisation worldwide intending to fund a candidate (individual or project team) to undertake research. Applications are invited from all academic disciplines, although preference will be given to those with an applied scientific focus, such as marine biology, chemistry, ecology, physics, engineering and economics.

Funding and Duration

For individual projects, funding is capped at the following levels:

• Short-term projects – up to £60K: This can be spread over 1-2 years and can include research costs, staff costs and overheads, equipment/hardware costs,  and travel expenses. The proposal may include permanent staff, and/or one or more junior researchers recruited for the research.
• PhD research projects – up to £40K plus a student stipend and university fees: This sum (grant) is provided for research costs in instalments for the duration of the PhD. Additionally, a competitive annual stipend (living expenses) and contribution towards tuition fees are payable to the successful candidate each year for the duration of their research (up to 4 years).  The exact amount awarded is dependent on the location of the institution where the research is undertaken and will increase annually with local inflation. All amounts are capped annually as per the UK Research and Innovation reference values for the same items. The grant can be used for: Acquisition of project equipment/hardware costs, travel expenses for student training and conference attendance, fieldwork expenses, and consumable items.

A full breakdown of the cost of the project must be included in the proposal.

How to apply

The application form can be found here.

Supporting material

More information regarding the application process can be found here.

Please keep in mind that if you are considering applying, you must follow these guidelines. Get in touch with us (cesam-gesciencia@ua.pt) and we can provide you with specific support.