The people we nurture and support to become tomorrow’s leaders in discovery science are central to the Medical Research Council’s (MRC) mission. A highly skilled research workforce, able to move flexibly between academia, clinical practice and industry, is essential to the UK’s continued leadership in medical research.
Refreshing our principles and priorities
Over the last decade, MRC has pioneered the targeting of flexible support at key career transitions, an approach subsequently adopted by many other funders. But the funding landscape is constantly evolving and, in 2024, we refreshed our forward priorities for training and careers to ensure we continue to achieve the greatest impact.
Consultation and forward principles
Throughout 2024, we consulted a wide range of stakeholders from academic and business sectors on MRC’s support of academic, clinical-academic and technical careers.
With advice from our Training and Careers Group, we identified the following cross-cutting principles:
- enhancing support for people and teams through all our support mechanisms
- incentivising and de-risking clear, attractive and fluid career paths
- providing a coherent offer of flexible support targeted at key transitions
From now on, MRC will consider the opportunities to support people and develop skills in everything we do. That will include targeted investment in people through studentships, fellowships and grants, as well as considering the people in the teams that drive forward research on our investigator-led grants, infrastructure or strategic investments.
Priority 1: early career transitions
MRC will continue its positive focus on key career transitions and retain and increase the flexibility of awards to attract and support a greater diversity of talent.
Support training of researchers
MRC retains a key role in supporting PhDs within a changing cross-funder landscape. We will:
- seek to maintain our support for Doctoral Training Partnerships, and increase dissemination of best practice to ensure wider benefit to the sector
- consider strategic growth in the number of PhDs via co-funding of UKRI focal awards where this meets capacity needs identified by MRC’s research boards
- increase support for clinical research PhDs through existing competitions
- explore alternative approaches to provide clinicians with early research experience in line with recommendations from the 2025 report on ‘Clinical researchers in the UK’
Prioritise ‘first independence’ in fellowships
Support to develop evidence of independent thought leadership and enable the first step to establish a group remains a difficult career step in biomedical research.
MRC schemes targeted at the transition to independence (MRC Career Development Awards and MRC Clinician Scientists) have continued to attract high numbers of applications but overlap with UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships. To address a developing earlier career gap, we will shift our fellowship support to enable ‘first independence’ to build the next generation. This support may be targeted at areas where there is evidence of existing or emerging skills gaps.
Priority 2: target critical skills gaps and career pathways
MRC will continue to build critical skills in identified and emerging areas of need throughout our investments and across career pathways.
Target priority skills
Where a research skills need is identified, we will consider:
- capacity-building through targeted fellowships embedded in strategic investments to upskill and reskill cadres of individuals
- targeted co-funding of focal awards where a gap is identified at PhD level
We will continue and enhance support for MRC PhD students and fellows to develop entrepreneurial and leadership skills.
Incentivise sustainable careers
We will seek to support and de-risk the creation of attractive and sustainable careers by:
- evaluating the support provided to research teams during all our investment decision-making, drawing on best practice from MRC’s Centres of Research Excellence and UKRI
- widening eligibility for our schemes to support those driving intellectual, methodological and technical leadership, valuing these career paths equally
- trialling provision of tapered support for technical and team science careers aligned to infrastructure investment, with an expectation to create a sustainable cost-recovery approach with open-ended career paths
- embedding effective approaches from pilot activity to drive equality, diversity and inclusion across our support mechanisms
Priority 3: enabling a mobile workforce
Key to achieving government ambitions for growth is the development of research and development skills beyond academia. This requires two-way movement of people between academia and other sectors. We will build on recent pilot activity and the existing opportunities to embed partnerships across our approaches.
Reduce barriers to cross-sector working
We will further increase flexibility of our awards, including enabling dual academic-industry roles, to de-risk and support individuals working across sectors.
Incentivise and de-risk mobility
We already provide our PhD cohorts with flexibility to embed industrial placements, and all awards can include industrial partnerships if relationships exist. In addition, we will seek to trial targeted approaches to enable short-term ‘risk-free’ mobility embedded in future large investments spanning strategic, infrastructure and cohort awards.
Encouraging academic re-entry
A perceived barrier to mobility is the ‘inability to return to academia’. Academic re-entry is particularly pertinent for clinicians who have returned to NHS work full time. We will explore approaches to enable academic re-entry focused on clinicians via localised flexible support for long-term success.
What success will look like
As a result of the priorities, we expect to:
- grow the research workforce at critical transition points and in key skill areas, including the clinical research workforce, and retain talent in research
- enable employers to provide more attractive and flexible career pathways spanning intellectual, technical and methodological careers
- increase the number of people moving between academia, business and the NHS to apply their research skills