From the archive: An STFC and Royal Society double-hit

The astronomer who won one prestigious fellowship at the third attempt, but accepted another

Coping with bid rejection is an important part of building a research career. One researcher who knows this all too well is Freeke van de Voort, who, after two rejected bids to the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Ernest Rutherford Fellowships scheme, won at the third attempt, only to take up a Royal Society University Research Fellowship that she’d concurrently applied for. As she says in this interview, first published in July 2020, the key thing was learning from each application and treating grant-writing as a skill she was working to hone.

The Ernest Rutherford Fellowships and University Research Fellowships both offer up to five years of support for early career scientists in a broad range of fields within the respective funders’ portfolios. The next calls for both schemes are due to open to applications this summer, with deadlines for both likely in early to mid-September.