A unique funding opportunity to create and host innovative workshops that address key challenges in clinical neuroscience was announced earlier this year. The new pilot funding initiative 'Masterclasses in Clinical Neuroscience' was set up to bring together basic researchers and clinicians to tackle key clinical problems in the neuroscience field and to promote translational research, as highlighted by the Wellcome Trust's Neuroscience and Mental Health Strategy Committee as a key need.

The aim of the Masterclasses is not only to immerse senior basic and clinical scientists in the complexity of a particular disease, but also to encourage the participation of more junior researchers at the postgraduate and postdoctoral level. The Masterclasses scheme, embracing the fact that neuroscience is a diverse and challenging field, offers researchers an educational vehicle as well as an innovative forum for developing interdisciplinary research collaborations.

Professors Hugh Perry (University of Southampton) and Nicholas Rawlins (University of Oxford), the Chairs of the Neuroscience and Mental Health Funding Committees, have been involved in developing this scheme with the Trust and both agreed that there is a pressing need for more communication between clinical and basic scientists.

Speaking about the scheme, Professor Perry said: "A forum in which basic and clinical scientists are brought together to appreciate the complexities of each others' approaches and disciplines is an obvious way forward…If basic scientists understand more about diseases of the brain this will offer new avenues for the application of knowledge, and similarly clinicians who have to deal with diseases will learn about new techniques and concepts that may be of value in treatment of a given disease."

Professor Rawlins added: "Mental illness has a huge cost, and so do neurological disorders. These facts fuel a need for scientists with an extraordinary mix of underlying skills and techniques. Successful neuroscientists will be contributing to solving some of the trickiest of our clinical problems, but in order to do so will need either to be more interdisciplinary than ever before, or embedded in more effective interdisciplinary networks then ever before. Schemes like this, which build links between basic and clinical research activities, offer ways to establish those crucial skills and networks so that the right expertise is brought to bear on the right problems."

One requirement of the Masterclasses scheme is that applications should be made in partnership with a UK-based learned society. These societies have professional administrative staff who are geared up to organising workshops and conferences, and would therefore make excellent partners in the scheme. The scheme also offers a good opportunity to enhance communication with the learned societies and their constituent members.

If the scheme is successful it could be a funding avenue made available in all the Wellcome Trust's funding streams. We are relying on the neuroscience community to embrace the concept and submit innovative proposals.

The deadline for Masterclass applications is 1 December 2006.

Learn more about the scheme and how to apply on our funding pages. We are very much looking forward to receiving proposals and encourage any potential applicants to contact us to discuss ideas.