Bogged-down council cuts funding round

The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council has announced it will cut one of its funding rounds to reduce its peer-review, research committee and administrative burden.

The council said it had seen a 138 per cent rise in applications since 1997 and that grant round application processing had begun to overlap. It said there would be no reduction in the funding budget, which would be split between two annual rounds.

The cut-off dates for applications for responsive-mode funding in 2003 will be January 20 and July 14.