Funder: Wellcome Foundation
Due Dates: July 8, 2025 (Scope check deadline, optional) | July 22, 2025 (Applications close)
Funding Amounts: £1-5 million per project for 3-5 years
Summary: Funding for multidisciplinary projects leveraging longitudinal data to improve early identification and intervention for anxiety, depression, and psychosis through advanced data analytics and experimental research.
Key Information: Applications must include validation in independent datasets, an experimental component, and meaningful involvement of lived experience experts. Administering organisations cannot be based in mainland China.
Description
Wellcome Foundation invites applications for projects that leverage existing longitudinal data to innovate early identification and intervention strategies for anxiety, depression, and/or psychosis. The award supports multidisciplinary teams combining mental health researchers and data scientists to develop precise prediction models and experimental research that can transform early intervention approaches.
Projects must:
- Use existing longitudinal datasets with at least three time points.
- Validate prediction models in fully independent samples.
- Include an experimental component that complements data analysis, such as mechanistic studies or pilot interventions.
- Incorporate lived experience expertise in ethical and meaningful ways.
- Demonstrate strong translational potential to impact real-world early interventions.
The award encourages ambitious, high-impact research that may involve qualitative/unstructured data analysis and prioritizes inclusion of underrepresented populations and low- and middle-income country datasets.
Due Dates
- July 8, 2025: Optional scope check deadline (submit brief project summary for feedback on scope)
- July 22, 2025, 17:00 BST: Final application deadline
Shortlisting decisions are expected in September 2025, with interviews and funding decisions in December 2025.
Funding Amount
- Awards range from £1 million to £5 million per project.
- Funding duration is 3 to 5 years.
- Funding covers a wide range of research costs including staff, materials, equipment, clinical research costs, public engagement, lived experience involvement, overheads, and training.
Eligibility
- Open to teams of researchers from any relevant discipline aligned with Wellcome’s mental health funding principles.
- Applicants must be based at eligible organisations anywhere in the world except mainland China.
- Administering organisations can be higher education institutions, research institutes, non-academic healthcare organisations, or not-for-profit/non-governmental research organisations. Commercial organisations cannot be administering organisations but can participate as coapplicants or collaborators.
- Lead applicants and coapplicants can be at any career stage, including early career researchers.
- Part-time applicants are eligible if they can dedicate at least 20% of their research time.
- Applicants who have taken career breaks or retired may apply but must meet specific conditions.
- Applicants cannot hold or apply for more than the maximum number of Wellcome awards allowed for their career stage.
- An individual can be lead applicant on one application and coapplicant on another, or coapplicant on two applications, with sufficient capacity.
Application Process
- Applications must be submitted via the Wellcome Funding Platform.
- A letter from data holders confirming dataset suitability must be included.
- Applicants are encouraged to request a scope check by July 8, 2025.
- An information webinar was held on May 7, 2025 (recording available).
- Neuromatch matchmaking service is available (registration deadline May 18, 2025) to find collaborators.
- Applications undergo eligibility and remit checks, followed by committee assessment based on four weighted criteria: research question and methodology (40%), team expertise (20%), research environment (20%), and lived experience involvement (20%).
- Shortlisted applicants will be invited for a virtual interview in December 2025.
- Final funding decisions are made by Wellcome’s Mental Health Team.
Additional Information
Research Proposal Requirements
- Focus on early prediction of onset, progression, or treatment response of anxiety, depression, and/or psychosis at individual or subgroup level.
- Use robust, justified data analytic methods integrating mental health and data science expertise.
- Validate models in fully independent datasets, distinct from development datasets.
- Include an experimental component (e.g., molecular, systems neuroscience, animal models, human studies).
- Incorporate lived experience experts meaningfully across multiple project stages.
- Address ethical considerations, data privacy, and consent in data use.
- Demonstrate translational potential for real-world early intervention impact.
- Projects focusing on population-level risk factors, neurodevelopmental/neurodegenerative disorders, or based solely on simulated data are out of scope.
- Setting up new cohorts or longitudinal datasets is not supported.
Public Engagement
- Applicants are encouraged to undertake engagement activities using two-way communication approaches.
- Engagement plans should be developed in consultation with dataset holders.
Resources
- Atlas of Longitudinal Datasets to identify suitable datasets.
- Frameworks and guidance on ethical governance of mental health databanks and equitable partnerships are provided.
- Neuromatch platform for collaboration matchmaking.
External Links
Contact Information