ARC Future Fellowships

The results were announced of the first round of the ARC (Australian Research Council) Future Fellowships. These are fellowships tenable for 4 years at an Australian institution for "mid-career" researchers. 200 fellowships were awarded out of 975 proposals submitted. ANU got 21 of the fellowships, though its success rate of 26% was not a lot higher than average. Universities such as Deakin and Edith Cowan had a 0% success rate but Charles Sturt got 25%. Clearly it's riskier to apply to work outside a Go8 university, a major medical institute, or CSIRO (14% success rate). There were higher success rates for younger people asking for lower salaries, which is not surprising. 14% of applicants were foreign nationals and 8% returning Australians. The former had a slightly lower success rate and the latter a slightly higher success rate. There were slightly lower than average success rates in the humanities and social sciences and in environmental priorities...

Though, it is still not 100% certain that the scheme will run again (but this morning ANU Deputy-VC and former ARC staffer Mandy Thomas seemed confident it would and the ARC website says that it will) I am planning to apply in the coming round if it does and if I am eligible (I'm borderline for being "mid-career" but might be someone that Australia would like to retain here, having only recently come back from overseas and currently being on soft money). I have a draft proposal, which I've received plenty of feedback on. I will now work up some of the additional material on track record etc. required. If I don't use it for the Future Fellowship competition I'l turn it into an ARC Discovery Project proposal.