The Marsden Fund

As a consequence of increases announced by the Government  in the 2009 Budget, the Marsden Fund will rise from the current level of $37.88 million per year to $46.88 million per year (exclusive of GST) from 1 July.  This is the largest increase in the history of the Fund and will allow a substantial number of new projects to be funded each year.

The 2009 funding round is already in progress.  New applications for the Fund will be sought later this year with proposals due in early 2010.

The Marsden Fund supports research excellence in science, technology, engineering and maths, social sciences and the humanities.

The Fund’s objectives are to:

• undertake investigator-driven research
  
• enhance the research knowledge base in New Zealand
• contribute to the global advancement of knowledge
• broaden and deepen the research skill base in New Zealand

Marsden Fund Preliminary Proposals for 2009

This year there were 934 preliminary proposals – 675 Standard proposals and 259 Fast-Start proposals. This is about 10% more proposals than the number received last year when 593 Standard and 244 Fast-Start proposals were submitted. As the precise funding level for 2009/10 is not yet known, it is not possible to state how many of the selected proposals will be funded, but the Marsden Fund Council expect, at this stage, to be able to fund a similar number of proposals to that of recent years (80 to 90 proposals in total). Therefore, despite the standard of applications again being very high, many excellent proposals have had to be eliminated at this stage. In total, 215 applicants have been invited to submit Full Proposals, 155 Standards and 60 Fast-Starts.

Most of the increase in proposals was taken up by Standard proposals with only a small increase from Fast-Starts.  The Fast-Start scheme was expanded last year with the size of awards being increased to $100k per year for up to three years. This has had an overall impact on the number of proposals that we can fund by effectively doubling the total amount of a Fast-Start award.

The small changes to the web-based application system Proposals On-Line has further reduced the formatting issues of the past, but the Council still notes that a few people do not follow instructions when preparing the reference sections and CVs by not listing co-authors, by citing work not yet published or by listing non-refereed conference proceedings.

The following table shows the number of applications received in different categories and the number of applicants invited to submit a full proposal. Note that the “totals” are greater than the number of separate proposals as they include proposals sent to more than one panel. Full proposals have been requested for 155 of the Standard proposals and 60 of the Fast-Start ones.

Panel	No. of Fast-Start Proposals		No. of Standard Proposals
	Pre	Full	Pre	Full
Biomedical Sciences	28	9	80	19
Cellular, Molecular & Physiological Biology	19	4	81	20
Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour	30	7	106	24
Economics and Human & Behavioural Sciences	8	2	56	14
Earth Sciences and Astronomy	22	5	57	13
Humanities	33	6	61	12
Mathematical and Information Sciences	33	8	76	16
Physical Sciences and Engineering	36	9	105	20
Social Sciences	57	10	94	20
Total	266	60	716	155

 

 

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