The ISSF activities to be funded at Queen’s include:

Enhance research opportunities for clinical trainees
ISSF at Queen’s will provide 4-6 month Research Fellowship for Clinical trainees based at Moorfields Eye Hospital or Hospitals associated with Imperial College London. Fellows will be given an opportunity to get involved in a cross-institution collaborative project and gain insight into clinical research.

Early Career Reseacher support for collaborative projects
The ISSF will serve to enhance Queen’s partnership with colleagues in the IoO/NIHL by supporting projects that will develop strong and sustained collaborative partnerships in our focused areas. Secondly, the collaborative exchanges will be taken by newly appointed lecturers and midcareer academic staff who will spend up to 3 months embedded in the partner institution conducting a collaborative project.

Fund to enhance research opportunities for clinical trainees
This scheme complements the early career collaborative projects but is configured to address a significant issue throughout the UK which is to attract gifted clinical trainees into academia. Specifically for Northern Ireland, we need to promote competitiveness of our clinical trainees for national fellowships and grant awards. We will provide a 4-6 month research fellowship for clinical trainees at F2 stage or in the clinical academic training programme with an opportunity to enhance their training by conducting a research project led by QUB but partly embedded within a world-class specialist institution in ophthalmology (Moorfields) or respiratory disease (Brompton).

Public Engagement
We recognise that meaningful and sustained public engagement is essential to producing research with high impact and this is now embedded with the new University Social Charter.

It is anticipated that this ISSF will significantly enhance this engagement, especially related to biomedical research activity at the University.

This will involve several distinct strands:
1. Promoting public engagement
2. Developing public engagement events
3. Improving engagements with patients
4. Rewarding excellence